A 

A 

0 
0 
0 

5 
7 
5 
4 
5 
4 


:.--r;.--Xl  v-^-r-n^-rif.  I  ■ 


?5M=f5l;-r  \'.>,  ,».^b .  i^M^^M 


:  o 
:  c: 


•  52 


LEWIS  BROOKS 


m^i^- 


a^^i^A:^  ^^  WfA»  ^  5^y:>ffl<?.^A*>^j 


i 


Ian  s  Age  in  the  World,   j 


^MMRfr 


■-■•>  ft-/-:- Si  ■ 


fMUSM&fil^i-^ 


s^'^^fcl'.' 


riU.-i-li,-u;  -'. 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


/ 


^y 


-/^^^^^^ 


pj^^  My  ^-  /^^^-^v^^y^^ 


c^ 


OPENING  of  tl^e  LEWIS  BROOKS  MUSEUM 


AT  THE 


UNIVERSITY    OF   VIRGINIA, 

JUNE     27th,    187  8. 


ADDRESS 


ON 


MAN'S  Age  in  the  V/orld. 


BY 


JAS.  C   SOUTHALL,  A,  M.,  LL.  D., 


WITH  INTRODUCTORY  REHJARKS  OF 


Hon.  A.  H.  H.  STUART,  Rector 


lluljmouCi: 
Printed  by  order  of  the  Board  of  Visitors. 

1878. 


CLEMMITT  &  JONES, 

PRINTERS, 

RICHMOND,  VA. 


Si 3. 


ou 


RESOLUTIONS  OF  THE  BOARD  OF  VISITORS, 


PASSED  JUNE  27,  1878. 


Whereas  this  board  desires  to  preserve  in  a  permanent  shape  some  record 
of  the  public  opening  of  the  Brooks"Museum,  both  in  grateful  appreciation  of 
the  munificence  of  Mr.  Brooks,  and  to  give  enduring  form  to  the  addresses 
delivered  on  the  occasion  :     Therefore, 

Resolved,  i.  That  we  hereby  request  of  Hon.  A.  H.  H.  Stuart  and  Dr. 
J.  C.  Southall  copies  of  the  addresses  delivered  by  them  this  day. 

Resolved,  2.  That  the  Executive  Committee  cause  to  be  printed  one  thou- 
sand copies  of  said  addresses,  with  such  other  matter  as  they  may  judge 
suitable,  of  which  two  hundred  copies  shall  be  bound. 

Resolved,  3.  That  ten  copies  of  said  publication  so  bound  shall  be  deposited 
in  the  University  Library,  and  the  others  disposed  of  as  the  Executive  Commit- 
tee may  deem  best. 

Resolved,  4.  That  the  Executive  Committee  be  authorized  to  draw  on  the 
Proctor  for  cost  of  publication. 

Resolved,  5.  That  Mr.  Hart  be  requested  to  ask  of  Dr.  Southall  a  copy  of  his 
address. 


550371 


r^ 


y^^k-^ 


^ 


Prefatory  Note. 


Early  in  1S76,  Professor  Henry  A.  Ward,  of  Rochester, 
New  York,  in  correspondence  with  Professor  Smith,  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Virginia,  announced  to  him  that  a  gentleman  of 
Rochester,  an  admirer  of  Mr.  Jefferson,  and  an  earnest  well- 
wisher  of  the  South,  who  directed  that  his  name  should  be  with- 
held, desired  to  promote  the  study  of  Natural  History  in  the 
University  by  the  establishment  of  a  complete  and  costly  Mu- 
seum on  the  condition  that  other  friends  of  the  institution  would 
raise  the  sum  of  $12,000  to  provide  for  the  necessary  cases, 
mounting,  transportation,  &c. 

The  Board  of  Trustees  of  the  Miller  Agricultural  Department 
of  the  University  promptly  pledged  $10,000  of  the  required 
amount,  and  Professor  W.  B.  Rogers  and  other  alumni  furnished 
the  remaining  $2,000  of  the  required  sum.  This  having  been 
secured,  the  following  letter  was  addressed  to  the  Hon.  A.  H.  H. 
Stuart,  Rector  of  the  University,  by  the  still  unknown  benefactor, 
under  the  bonds  of  secrecy : 

Rochester,  April  14th,  1876. 

To  the  Rector  and  Visitors  of  the  University  of  Virginia  : 

Gentlemen  : — Prof.  Henry  N.  Ward,  of  this  city,  will  deliver  to  you 
herewith  forty-five  of  the  bonds  of  the  Chicago,  Burlington,  and  Quincy  Rail- 
road Company,  of  one  thousand  dollars  each — $45,000. 

This  sum  being  deemed  by  Prof.  Ward  sufficient  to  enable  you  to  provide  a 
suitable  Building  for  a  Cabinet  of  Natural  Science  (with  the  exception  of 
Botany)  and  to  procure  through  him,  on  terms  which  will  be  mutually  satis- 
factory, the  necessary  material  for  such  Cabinet,  which  in  extent  and   in  all 


6  Opening  of  the  Lczuis  Brooks  Miise7im. 


respects  will  be  well  adapted  to  the  purpose  of  instruction  in  this  department  of 
education  in  the  University  of  Virginia,  I  respectfully  tender  for  your  accept- 
ance the  Bonds  above-mentioned;  the  avails  of  twenty-five  of  them  to  be 
devoted  to  the  procurement  of  the  material  for  said  Cabinet,  the  remaining 
twenty  to  the  erection  of  a  suitable  building. 

I  am,  gentlemen, 

Very  respectfully  yours, 

Lewis  Brooks. 

The  proceeds  of  the  bonds  mentioned  in  this  letter  amounted 
to  $50,000.  To  this  sum  Mr.  Brooks  subsequently  added  nearly 
$20,000  for  the  extension  of  the  building  and  of  the  collection, 
authorizing  among  other  things  the  addition  of  a  Botanical  Hall. 
The  building  was  completed  in  July,  1877,  and  before  the  splen- 
did collection  of  specimens  which  now  fills  its  wide  halls  and 
well-planned  galleries  had  been  fully  arranged  and  placed  in 
position,  the  telegraph  announced  the  name  and  sudden  death, 
on  the  evening  of  the  9th  of  August,  1877,  of  Virginia's  wise 
and  noble  benefactor.  His  heirs,  in  order  to  carry  out  fully  his 
plan  for  the  Museum,  have  generously  offered  to  complete  the 
collection  by  adding  the  specimens  for  the  Botanical  Hall.  The 
Museum  has  attracted  much  attention,  and  stands  on  the  site  se- 
lected by  its  founder — a  splendid  addition  to  the  educational 
forces  of  the  University  of  Virginia,  and  a  lasting  monument  to 
the  memory  of  Lewis  Brooks. 


Address  of  Hon.  A.  H.  H.  Stuart. 


Ladies  and  Gentlemen: 

The  occasion  which  has  brought  us 
together  to-day  must  be  recognized  by  all  who  are  present,  as 
one  of  extraordinary  interest,  and,  I  doubt  not,  it  will  be  so  re- 
garded by  generations  which  are  to  come  after  us.  We  have 
met  to  commemorate,  by  suitable  ceremonials,  the  formal  open- 
ing and  dedication  of  the  "Lewis  Brooks  Museum  of  Natu- 
ral Science;"  and  to  render  honor  to  the  memory  of  its  mu- 
nificent founder. 

Aside  from  the  mere  fact  of  the  noble  contribution  to  the  cause 
of  science  which  has  been  made  by  him,  there  are  considera- 
tions, connected  with  the  time  and  circumstances  uncler  which  his 
benefaction  was  bestowed,  which  demand  that  they  should  not 
only  be  gratefully  acknowledged  by  us,  but  that  they  should  be 
transmitted,  in  a  form  more  enduring  than  granite  or  marble,  to 
future  generations. 

Shortly  after  the  close  of  the  recent  civil  war,  which  was  so 
wxll  calculated  to  awaken  and  call  into  action  the  worst  passions 
of  our  nature;  and  when,  in  fact,  the  two  great  sections  of  our 
country  were  inflamed  and  exasperated  against  each  other  by  all 
the  angry  feelings  and  prejudices  engendered  by  the  then  recent 
fierce  sectional  conflict,  the  extraordinary  spectacle  was  pre- 
sented to  the  public,  of  an  old  gentleman,  of  one  of  the  northern 
states, — venerable  alike  for  his  age  and  private  virtues — a  man, 
theretofore  unheralded  by  fame, — and  whose  name  even  was  un- 


8  Opening  of  the  Leivis  Brooks  Miiseiitn. 


known  to  the  people  of  Virginia — rising  above  the  infirmities  of 
human  nature,  and  animated  by  that  spirit  of  Christian  charity 
"which  is  not  easily  provoked,  and  thinketh  no  evil,"  becoming 
the  generous  founder,  at  the  oldest  university  of  the  Southern 
States,  of  the  splendid  Museum,  which  we  are  now  about  to  dedi- 
cate to  its  appropriate  uses. 

His  singular  modesty  and  disinterestedness  in  this  act  of 
beneficence  is  evinced  by  the  fact  that  he  refused  constantly,  as 
lono-  as  he  lived,  to  allow  his  name  to  be  made  known  even  to 
the  Visitors  and  Faculty  of  the  University  on  which  he  had  con- 
ferred so  great  a  favor,  and  until  his  death,  a  few  months  ago,  the 
Rector  of  the  University  was  the  sole  depositary  of  his  secret. 

There  is  much  in  this  magnanimous  act,  and  in  the  circum- 
stances under  which  it  was  done,  which  tend  to  stamp  it  with  the 
impress  of  moral  sublimity. 

It  has  been  the  custom  of  men  in  all  ages  to  commemorate 
lofty  deeds  of  their  fellow-men  by  suitable  monuments,  intended 
to  transmit  them  to  the  remotest  posterity.  This  seems  to  us 
to  be  one  of  the  deeds  which  deserves  to  be  thus  perpetuated. 

Fortunately,  there  is  no  need  that  we  should  erect  any  monu- 
ment of  bronze  or  marble,  to  hand  down  to  future  ages,  the  name 
of  "Lewis  Brooks."  The  Museum  itself  stands,  and,  I  hope, 
will  forever  stand, — a  noble  matcidal  moJiiunent  of  his  munificent 
contribution  to  the  cause  of  science. 

But  there  are  other  memorials  which  are  more  durable  than 
brass  or  monumental  marble. 

The  ruins  of  Babylon,  of  Baalbec,  and  of  Palmyra,  teach  us 
that  the  proudest  structures  erected  by  human  hands,  must  soon 
crumble  beneath  the  touch  of  time's  effacing  finger;  while  the 
creations  of  the  human  intellect,  like  the  works  of  Homer,  Thu- 
cidydes,  and  Aristode,  are  destined  to  continue  indestructible, 
through  all  future  ages. 


Man's  Age  in  the   World. 


It  was,  therefore,  wisely  determined  by  the  authorities  of  the 
University  to  perpetuate  the  memory  of  our  munificent  benefac- 
tor, by  inscribing  his  name,  in  letters  of  living  light,  on  the 
archives  of  the  institution,  and  by  associating  it  inseparably  with 
a  noble  intellectual  contribution  to  the  store  of  human  knowledge. 

In  casting  about  for  an  architect  competent  to  plan  and  erect 
this  intellectual  vioniinient,  more  stately  than  the  proudest  col- 
umn, and  more  durable  than  the  pyramids  of  Egypt,  it  was 
readily  perceived  that  he  should  be  a  native  of  Virginia,  inti- 
mately acquainted  with  Virginian  character,  and  deeply  imbued 
with  Virginian  feeling,  so  that  he  might  give  suitable  expression  to 
the  sentiment  of  Virginia.  It  was  proper,  in  the  next  place,  that 
he  should  be  an  alumnus  of  the  University,  with  a  heart  filled 
with  filial  love  to  his  alma  viatcr,  and  a  mind  trained  to  letters, 
and  scientific  investigation,  by  her  admirable  system  of  intellec- 
tual culture.  Finally,  it  was  necessary  that  he  should  be  a  man 
of  vigorous  intellect,  of  catholic  sentiment,  of  ripe  scholarship, 
and  known  to  the  world  as  being  in  full  sympathy  with  the  cause 
of  science  and  human  progress. 

I  grant  that  it  was  a  difficult  task  to  find  a  man  in  whom  all 
these  high  qualifications  were  harmoniously  blended.  But  all 
will  admit  that  the  authorities  of  the  University  have  been  fortu- 
nate in  securing  the  services  of  a  gentleman  eminently  qualified 
for  this  high  and  responsible  duty,  when  I  introduce  to  you,  as 
the  orator  of  the  day,  Mr.  James  Cocke  Southall,  of  Virginia. 


Man's  Age  in  the  World: 


An  Address  delivered  at  the  request  of  the  Faculty  of  the  Uni- 
versity OF  Virginia,  on  the  occasion  of  the  opening  of  the 
Lewis  Brooks  Museum  of  Natural  Science,  June  27TH, 
1878,  BY  James  C.  Southall,  A.  M.,  LL.  D. 


Jlfr.  Rector  and  Gentlemen  of  the  Board  of  Visitors  : 
Mr.  Chairma?i  and  Gentlemen  of  the  Faculty  : 
Ladies  and  Gentlemen :' 

We  have  assembled  here,  and  I  have  been  requested  to 
deliver  this  address,  in  connection  with  the  formal  opening  of  the 
Lewis  Brooks  Museum  of  Natural  Science.  By  the  munificence 
of  a  stranger  who  lived  and  died  in  a  distant  State,  aided  from 
the  endowment  bestowed  by  a  large-hearted  Virginian,  we  ha\'e 
placed  another  jewel  in  the  diadem  of  our  Alma  Mater,  and  I  am 
bold  to  say  have  marked  a  new  era  in  the  history  of  the  Univer- 
sity. Breaking  through  the  ties  of  sectional  prejudice  and  pro- 
vincial sentiment,  and  recognizing  in  this  institution  the  presence 
of  that  immortal  spirit  who  was  the  broadest  and  most  far-seeing 
of  all  the  American  statesmen,  our  benefactor  has  erected  here 
one  of  those  imperishable  monuments,  which,  in  comparison  with 
the  cold  and  pulseless  marble,  is  like  some  beautiful  fountain, 
sleeping  and  breathing  in  the  silent  rock,  and  sending  forth 
forever  its  pure  and  unsullied  crystal  waters.  Oftentimes,  men 
of  generous  and  liberal  ideas,  misplace  the  subjects  of  their 
bounty;    the  gift  is  often  unsuitable  or  incapable  of  utilization. 


12  Opening  of  the  Lewis  Brooks  Musenin. 


and  large  sums  of  money  are  wasted  and  thrown  away,  because 
misdirected  towards  the  general  object  in  view.  By  a  happy 
inspiration  Mr.  Brooks,  if  I  may  borrow  a  phrase  from  the  distin- 
guished professor  of  Moral  Philosophy,  seems  to  have  "in- 
tuited" the  need  of  our  University;  it  was  precisely  such  a 
museum  as  this  that  we  wanted  right  here,  to  draw  the  attention 
of  our  young  men  to  the  most  engrossing  study  that  now  engages 
the  devotees  of  science,  and  to  equip  our  noble  institution  in 
some  sort  for  that  field  of  investigation  which  has  grown  of  late 
into  such  importance. 

We  could  very  well  dispense  with  a  gallery  of  pictures,  or  a 
School  of  Design,  although  I  do  hope  that  Drawing  will  here- 
after receive  that  attention  in  our  male  and  female  schools  which 
it  so  richly  deserves ;  nor  are  we  prepared  for  a  chair  of  Sanskrit 
or  Oriental  Literature;  nor  for  Egyptology  or  the  Chinese  Lan- 
guage and  Literature;  nor  have  we  any  imperative  need  for  a 
Museum  of  Archaeology;  we  can  even  wait,  if  our  noble  friend 
will  favor  us,  for  our  great  telescope,  which  we  hope  to  see 
crowning  at  no  distant  day  one  of  the  neighboring  eminences ; 
but  that  the  young  men  of  Virginia  and  the  South  should  enter 
upon  the  study  of  Geology  and  Zoology,  in  the  present  state  of 
science,  hardly  admits  of  further  delay,  and  in  receiving  the 
specimens  which  have  been  collected  and  arranged  in  yonder 
Museum,  headed  by  that  portentous  effigy*  which  is  the  most 
conspicuous  object  in  the  several  halls,  I  am  sure  you  will  agree 
with  me,  Mr.  Rector  and  gentlemen,  that  we  have  no  elephant  on 
our  hands  ! 

That  elephant  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  objects  now  in  the 
domain  of  science.  If  we  can  fix  the  Mammoth's  "place  in 
nature" — to  use  the  words  of  the  gifted  Huxley — we  can  fix  that 
of  man ;  and  I  am  glad  that  the  young  gentlemen  here,  in  the 

*The  Mammoth. 


Man's  Age  in  ihc  World.  13 


presence  of  this   Colossus,  have  ever  before  them  a  mute,  yet 
persuasive,  invocation  into  the  path  of  Anthropological  study. 

The  invitation  to  deliver  this  address  was  accompanied  by  the 
request  that  I  should  select  for  the  occasion  a  topic  which  I  have 
made  a  special  subject  of  investigation  for  some  years,  and  I  shall 
therefore,  as  far  as  it  can  be  done  in  a  brief  hour's  time,  attempt 
to  lay  before  you  the  present  phase  of  the  question  of  "  Man's 
Age  in  the  World." 

It  is  alleged,  as  you  are  aware,  gentlemen, — monstrous  as  it 
appears  to  the  unscientific  and  those  who  have  not  paused  to 
reflect  on  the  subject — that,  surrounded  as  we  are  in  that  Mu- 
seum by  all  those  Rhizopods,  Euripterids,  Selachians,  Saurian 
and  Simian  forms,  we  stand  there  in  the  presence  of  our  ances- 
tors : — a  grotesque  and  ill-favoured  procession  of  progenitors ! 
It  seems  to  me,  therefore,  eminently  appropriate,  in  these  inaugu- 
ration ceremonies,  that  we  should  undertake  to  fix  with  some 
little  exactness  the  precise  relations  which  are  to  exist  between 
the  old  residents  here  and  the  new  intruders  in  these  classic 
shades.  I  think  it  will  be  well  to  disabuse  our  minds  of  any 
suspicion  of  relationship — say  between  the  Professor  of  History 
and  the  Rhamphorhynciis  Bncklandi — or  the  Mathematical  Pro- 
fessor and  the  Inoceranius  rectangiihis,  that  pioneer  geometer  of 
the  Jurassic  seas — if  in  fact  no  such  link  exists;  and  on  the 
other  hand,  if  that  Cynocephahis  haniadryas  or  that  Macac2is 
silcnus  is  your  great-great-great  (to  the  n"'  power)  grandfather — 
or  to  speak  more  accurately,  a  very  distant  cousin,  descended 
from  the  same  stirps — I  think  a  knowledge  of  that  fact  would 
lead  you  to  look  with  deeper  interest,  when  you  enter  that  room, 
on  his  portrait. 

Evolution  is  now  the  doctrine  of  a  large  majority  of  the  scien- 
tific men  of  Europe  and  America.  It  has  proceeded  so  far  that 
you  will  find  it  (as  also  the  doctrine  of  the  Antiquity  of  Man) 


14  Opening  of  the  Lewis  Brooks  Miiseiun. 


incorporated  in  our  advanced  text-books  of  Geology,  like  Lyell's 
and  Page's  and  LeConte's.  Whatever  opinion  one  may  hold  on 
the  subject,  I  cannot  but  regard  this  introduction  of  it  into  a  text- 
book as  a  grave  infraction  of  the  governing  principle  of  all  true 
science,  and  a  most  dangerous  departure  from  that  rigid  scientific 
method  which  is  the  true  glory  of  science.  Science  is  positive 
knowledge ;  the  true  scientific  spirit  is  characterized  by  a  caution 
that  almost  exceeds  that  of  a  conveyancer.  No  proposition  is 
admitted  into  the  scheme  which  has  not  passed  the  most  rigid 
scrutiny,  and  been  found  to  be — so  far  as  anything  human  is 
sure — absolutely  certain  and  unassailable.  On  the  portals  of  its 
Temple  is  written,  "  No  hypothesis  enters  here." 

While,  therefore,  it  is  perfectly  legitimate  to  frame  conjectures 
as  to  the  origin  of  life,  or  the  appearance  of  new  forms  of  life,  it 
is  an  unwarrantable  abandonment  of  the  fundamental  law  of 
science  to  propound  any  statement  on  this  subject  as  an  ascer- 
tained fact  which  the  propounder  does  not  know  to  be  true. 
We  do  not  quarrel  with  Pythagoras  for  his  doctrine  of  the  har- 
mony of  the  spheres,  for  he  lived  in  an  uncritical  age,  and  did 
not  claim  to  found  his  philosophy  on  observation;  nor  do  we 
quarrel  with  the  elemental  substances  of  Empedocles,  or  with  the 
atoms  of  Leucippus  and  Gassendi;  or  with  the  ideas  and  the 
mathematical  forms  of  Plato ;  or  with  the  monads  of  Bruno  and 
Leibnitz ;  and  we  smile  at  Burnet's  Sacred  Theory  of  the  Earth, 
and  Semmes's  vagaries  about  the  North  Pole;  because  these  were 
avowedly  guesses  at  truth,  and  Physical  Science  in  the  true 
sense  (as  regards  most  of  the  instances  cited)  did  not  then  exist. 
But  if  any  physicist  in  these  days  should  gravely  teach  that  the 
elementary  substance  of  all  things  is  ascertained  to  consist  of 
spherical  monads  or  metaphysical  points;  or  that  water  proceeds 
from  elements  having  the  icosahedral  form,  fire  from  elements  of 
the  pyramidal  form,  earth  from  elements  of  the  cubical  form,  and 


Man's  Age  in  the   World.      "  15 


that  the  form  of  the  universe  is  related  to  the  dodecahedron ;  or 
that  fire  and  the  soul  consist  of  fine,  smooth,  round  atoms,  and 
that  the  worlds  have  been  generated  by  the  rotatory  motion  in 
space  of  myriads  of  fortuitous  atoms  of  different  weights ;  would 
any  one  in  such  a  case  challenge  our  right  to  call  a  halt  in  the 
name  of  Science,  and  ask  for  what  I  believe  in  legal  phrase  is 
styled  a  bill  of  particulars  ? 

Now  while  it  is  by  no  means  the  absurd  theory  which  it  is 
popularly  thought  to  be;  while  it  is  largely  supported  by  the 
analogies  of  nature;  no  conscientious  advocate  of  Evolution  will 
say  that  it  is  more  than  a  belief :  not  one  solitary  case  has  been 
made  out.  There  is  not  an  animal  living,  or  an  animal  form  in 
the  geological  strata,  whose  pedigree  has  ever  been  positively 
carried  across  the  barrier  of  species. 

I  have  not  the  slightest  idea,  however,  of  discussing  on  this 
occasion  the  doctrine  of  Evolution ;  it  would  extend  my  remarks 
far  too  much  to  go  into  that  subject.  As  bearing,  nevertheless, 
on  my  main  theme,  the  Appearance  of  Man  on  the  Earth,  I  am 
compelled  to  touch  the  subject  in  a  very  general  way.  If  Man 
was  developed  from  the  lower  animals,  his  age,  of  course,  is 
inconceivable.  In  that  case  we  should  have  to  trace  man  back 
through  a  long  line  of  ancestors  until,  somewhere  in  the  Tertiary 
strata,  we  reached  the  common  trunk  from  which  the  anthropoid 
and  pithecoid  types  bifurcated.  No  such  forms  have,  however, 
been  found,  earlier  than  the  close  of  the  Quaternary,  and  the 
human  skeletons  of  this  date — the  oldest  human  skeletons — are 
precisely  like  the  human  skeletons  of  to-day,  with  the  same 
general  frame  and  the  same  cerebral  capacity.  Nor  have  any 
human  implements  been  found  in  the  Tertiary  strata.  Certain 
incised  bones  were  found  some  ten  years  ago  in  the  Pliocene 
strata  of  France,  at  St.  Prest,  and  similarly  marked  bones  were 
found  about  the  same  time  in  the  Val  d'  Arno,  in  Italy,  by  Prof. 


16  Opening  of  the  Lewis  Brooks  Museiim. 


Ramorino ;  and  it  was  claimed  that  they  had  been  cut  by  human 
hands.  The  distinguished  Professor  Lesley  of  Pennsylvania  was 
misled  by  the  discovery,  and  prematurely  announced  in  a  public 
lecture  in  Boston  that  Tertiary  man  had  at  last  been  found. 
Lyell,  however,  afterwards  ascertained  that  precisely  similar 
striae  and  cuttings  are  made  by  the  porcupine,  and  as  the  re- 
mains of  the  Trogo7itherium.  a  great  extinct  rodent,  were  found 
at  St.  Prest,  in  the  same  beds  with  the  incised  bones,  it  was  natu- 
rally concluded  that  this  animal,  and  not  man,  had  left  the  marks 
which  seemed  so  full  of  interest  to  Prof  Lesley.  The  Abbe 
Bourgeois  in  France  also  claims  to  have  found  worked  flints  in 
a  Miocene  bed  at  Thenay,  but  his  conclusions  are  not  accepted 
by  any  careful  geologist,  and  in  fact  would  prove  too  much,  as  on 
the  Evolution  theory  man  could  not  by  this  time  have  developed 
sufficiently  to  manufacture  stone  implements. 

Prof  O.  C.  Marsh  of  Yale,  and  Prof  Whitney  of  California, 
have  also  been  misled,  and  have  spoken  unadvisedly  with  regard 
to  the  discovery  of  traces  of  man  in  the  Pliocene  of  California ; 
and  Prof  Le  Conte,  in  his  recent  elaborate  and  valuable  "  Ele- 
ments of  Geology,"  has  given  some  countenance  to  this  mistake.* 

In  this  case  too  the  evidence  proves  too  much,  as  the  human 
implements  found,  at  the  depth  of  200  feet,  under  the  lava  de- 
posits of  California,  in  the  auriferous  gravel,  consist  of  superb 
granite  mortars  and  dishes,  of  large  size,  and  beautiful  weapons 
and  tools  belonging  to  the  Polished  Stone  Age  (if  not,  rather, 
that  of  the  metals);  and  it  must  only  excite  a  smile  to  suppose 
that  man  was  a  skilled  artisan  in  granite  in  the  Tertiary  Age. 
The  objects  found  in  the  gold-bearing  beds  of  California  were 
doubtless  left  there,  as   I  have  shown  elsewhere,  by  the  ancient 

*Prof.  Marsh's  Address  before  the  American  Association  in   1S77;  Foster's 
Prehist.  Races  of   United  States,  p.  53 ;  Le  Conte's  Elements  of  Geology,  p. 

567- 


Mail's  Age  in  the  World.     '  IT 


inhabitants  of  this   region,  who  sank  deep  shafts  and  ran  long 
galleries  in  the  mountains  in  their  search  for  gold. 

Mr.  Bancroft,  in  his  "  Native  Races  of  the  Pacific  States,"  has 
collected  a  number  of  instances  in  which  these  mortars  have  been 
met  with,  and  "they  have  been  found,"  he  tells  us,  "in  almost 
every  instance  by  miners  in  their  search  for  gold;"  and  they 
come  in  almost  every  instance  from  the  "auriferous  gravel."* 

The  abundance  of  the  precious  metals  we  know  excited  the 
astonishment  and  the  cupidity  of  the  Spaniards  in  both  Mexico 
and  Peru,  and  both  gold  and  copper,  we  are  told  by  Mr.  Ban- 
croft, were  mined  in  ancient  times  in  Mexico  from  veins  in  the 
solid  rock,  extensive  galleries  being  opened  for  the  purpose.! 
They  carried  their  excavations,  we  are  informed,  200  feet  or  more 
to  procure  the  chalchiuite ;{:  so  much  worn  by  them,  and  so  highly 
prized  as  an  ornament. 

So  the  Mound-Builders,  a  much  ruder  race,  mined  for  copper 
on  the  shores  of  Lake  Superior,  and  for  mica  in  the  mountains 
of  North  Carolina. 

Schoolcraft  mentions  the  actual  discovery  of  one  of  these 
ancient  shafts  in  California,  at  a  place  called  "  Murphy's,"  one  of 
the  very  places  where  these  stone  mortars  have  been  found.  At 
the  bottom  of  this  shaft,  210  feet  in  depth,  a  human  skeleton  was 
found,  and  "an  altar  of  worship.";^ 

We  have  here,  therefore,  ah  obvious  explanation  of  these  fre- 
quent discoveries  of  stone  mortars  in  the  gold-bearing  gravel 
by  the  miners  in  California.  They  belong  to  the  time  of  the 
Aztecs  and  Toltecs,  and  were  probably  used  for  the  purpose 
of  crushing  the  cemented  gravel  in  which  the  gold  is  found.^i 

*Vol.  IV,  p.  698,  et  seq.  f  Ibid.  II,  474. 

+  Ibid.  IV,  673. 

§  Schoolcraft's  Archaeology,  I,  105. 

TfCuts  of  these  mortars  may  be  found  in  "The  Native  Races  of  the  Pacific 
States,"  or  in  "  The  Epoch  of  the  Mammoth,"  pp.  395,  396. 
2 


18  Opening  of  the  Leivis  Bi'ooks  Museum. 


A  few  years  since  it  was  asserted  that  a  human  fibula  had  been 
found  under  the  glacial  clay  in  the  Victoria  Cave,  in  Yorkshire, 
England,  and  Prof.  Boyd  Dawkins — perhaps  the  most  learned  of 
all  the  European  archaeologists — claimed  that  it  established  the 
fact  that  man  in  the  North  of  Europe  ^n^s,  pre -glacial.  Remains 
of  the  domesticated  animals  have,  however,  since  been  found  in 
the  same  bed,  great  doubt  has  been  thrown  over  the  glacial  date 
of  the  clay,  and  the  bone  is  now  pronounced  to  belong  probably 
to  a  bear.  Although  he  had  announced  the  discovery  of  pre- 
glacial  man  in  1874,  Prof.  Dawkins,  at  a  meeting  of  the  Geo- 
logical Society  of  London  held  last  year,  formally  retracted  this 
declaration,  and  at  a  Conference  of  Anthropologists  held  in  Lon- 
don at  the  Anthropological  Institute,  about  the  same  time,  it  was 
generally  conceded  that  there  is  no  evidence  of  pre-glacial  man 
in  England.* 

Prof.  Riitimeyer's  sharpened  sticks  found  in  the  inter-glacial 
bed  at  Diirnten,  in  Switzerland,  are  also  given  up  in  the  last 
number  of  the  Edinburgh  Reznew  ;\  and  the  first  traces  of  man 
are  thus  brought  down,  by  pretty  general  consent,  to  the  close  of 
the  Quaternary  period — the  post-glacial  epoch,  when  the  rude 
flint  implements  referred  to  man  appear  in  the  river  gravel  and 
in  the  older  bone  caves.     Here,  gentlemen,  we  may  pause. 

Man  appears — and  appears  fully  developed — at  the  close  of  the 
Quaternary  Period.  The  tertiary  strata  and  the  overlying  quater- 
nary beds  have  been  carefully  searched  now  for  a  series  of  years 
in  Europe,  America,  and  portions  of  Asia  and  Africa,  and  not  a 
solitary  bone  has  been  found  which  belonged  to  any  intermediate 
form  between  man  and  the  ape.  I  will  quote  on  this  point  the 
declarations  of  the  eminent  Prof  Virchow  of  Berlin,  at  the  Con- 

*See  Proceedings  of  Geolog.  Soc.  of  London,  April  11,  1877,  and  a  Report 
in  Nature,  ^o\.  xvi.  No.  397,  p.  106,  of  a  discussion  at  Anthropolog.  Institute. 

f  April,  1878,  article  on  "Bronze  Age." 


Mail's  Age  in  the  World.  19 


ference  of  German  Naturalists  and  Physicians  held  at  Munich  in 
September  last : 

There  are  at  this  time  few  students  of  nature  who  are  not  of  opinion  that 
man  stands  in  some  connection  with  the  rest  of  the  animal  kingdom,  and  that 
such  a  connection  may  possibly  be  discovered,  if  not  with  the  apes,  yet,  perhaps, 
as  Herr  Vogt  now  supposes,  at  some  other  point.  I  freely  acknowledge  that  this 
is  a  desideratum  in  Science.  I  am  quite  prepared  for  such  a  result,  and  I  should 
neither  be  surprised  nor  astonished  if  the  proof  were  produced  that  man  had 
ancestors  among  other  vertebrate  animals.  You  are  aware  that  I  am  now  spe- 
cially engaged  in  the  study  of  anthropology,  but  I  am  bound  to  declare  that 
every  positive  advance  which  we  have  made  in  the  province  of  prehistoric  an- 
thropology has  actually  removed  us  further  from  the  proof  of  such  a  connection. 

He  goes  on  to  speak  of  Quaternary  man,  and  then  proceeds  as 
follows : 

When  we  study  this  fossil  man  of  the  quaternary  period,  who  must  of  course 
have  stood  comparatively  near  our  primitive  ancestors  in  the  series  of  descent, 
or  rather  of  ascent,  we  always  find  a  man  just  such  as  men  are  now.  As  re- 
cently as  ten  years  ago,  whenever  a  skull  was  found  in  a  peat  bog,  or  in  pile- 
dwellings,  or  in  ancient  caves,  people  fancied  they  saw  in  it  a  wonderful  token 
of  a  savage  state  still  quite  undeveloped.  They  smelt  out  the  very  scent  of  the 
ape — only  the  trail  has  gradually  been  lost  more  and  more.  The  old  troglo- 
dytes, pile-villagers  and  bog  people  prove  to  be  quite  a  respectable  society. 
They  have  heads  so  large  that  many  a  living  person  would  be  only  too  happy  to 
possess  such.  Our  French  neighbors,  indeed,  have  warned  us  against  inferring 
too  much  from  these  big  heads.  It  may  have  been  that  their  contents  were  not 
merely  nerve  substance,  but  that  the  ancient  brains  may  have  had  more  con- 
nective tissues  than  is  now  usual,  and  that,  in  spite  of  the  size  of  the  brain,  their 
nerve  substance  may  have  remained  at  a  lower  stage  of  development.  This, 
however,  is  but  a  sort  of  familiar  talk  which  is  employed  in  some  measure  as  a 
support  of  weak  minds.  On  the  whole  we  must  really  acknowledge  that  there 
is  a  complete  absence  of  any  fossil  type  of  a  lower  stage  in  the  development  of 
man.  Nay,  if  we  gather  together  the  whole  sum  of  the  fossil  men  hitherto 
known  and  put  them  parallel  with  those  of  the  present  time,  we  can  decidedly 
pronounce  that  there  are  among  living  men  a  much  gi eater  number  of  individ- 
uals who  show  a  relatively  inferior  type  than  there  are  among  the  fossils  known 


20  Opening  of  the  Lezvis  Brooks  Musetmi. 


up  to  this  time.  Whether  it  is  just  the  highest  geniuses  of  the  quaternary 
period  that  have  had  the  good  luck  to  be  preserved  to  us,  I  will  not  venture  to 
surmise.  Our  usual  course  is  to  argue  from  the  character  of  a  single  fossil  ob- 
ject to  the  generality  of  those  not  yet  found.  This,  however,  I  will  not  do.  I 
will  not  affirm  that  the  whole  race  was  as  good  as  the  few  skulls  that  have  sur- 
vived. But  one  thing  I  must  say — that  not  a  single  fossil  skull  of  an  ape  or  of 
an  anthropoid  ape  has  yet  been  found  that  could  really  have  belonged  to  a  human 
being.  Every  addition  to  the  amount  of  objects  which  we  have  obtained  as 
materials  to  discuss  have  removed  us  further  from  this  hypothesis. 

As  I  have  already  remarked,  I  have  no  idea  this  morning  of 
discussing  the  question  of  Evolution.  But  I  just  want  to  call 
your  attention  to  this  great  fact  of  this  immeasurable  gap  be- 
tween man  and  the  most  advanced  of  all  the  brute  forms. 
Whatever  be  true  back  of  all  this — however  cogent  may  be  the 
argument  for  the  evolution  of  the  Simian  types  from  the  lowest 
animal  forms  through  the  ages  of  geology,  the  evidence  stops 
with  the  brute  creation,  and  the  theory  as  applied  to  the  evolu- 
tion of  man,  as  the  matter  now  stands,  is  entirely  unsupported 
by  any  facts.  The  only  hope  held  out  of  finding  the  missing 
links  (of  which,  in  order  to  be  successful,  it  would  be  necessary 
to  find  not  one,  but  a  great  many)  is  that  suggested  by  Sir 
Charles  Lyell*  and  Dr.  Peschel,  that  as  the  habitat  of  the  anthro- 
pomorphous apes  is  in  tropical  countries,  the  missing  apes  may 
hereafter  be  found  in  Western  Africa  or  the  islands  of  Borneo  and 
Sumatra,  which,  it  is  remarked,  have  not  yet  been  explored;  or 
in  a  lost  district  of  the  earth  (supposed  to  be  lost)  in  the  Indian 
Ocean,  between  Africa  and  India,  which  Peschel  names  Lemuria. 
Mr.  Alfred  Russell  Wallace  has,  however,  very  pertinently  ob- 
served on  this,  that  in  Miocene  times  an  almost  tropical  climate 
prevailed  in  the  South  of  Europe,  and  that  we  must  suppose 
even  the  earliest  ancestors  of  man  to  have  been  terrestrial  and 

*  Antiq.  of  Man,  last   Eng.  edit.  p.  53S.     See   Races  of  Man  by   Peschel,  a 
most  valuable  work. 


Man's  Age  in  the  World.  21 


omniverous  (and  so,  widely  dispersed) ;  and,  therefore,  the  Euro- 
pean strata  would  be  as  likely  to  furnish  the  missing  links  as 
equatorial  Africa.* 

This  gulf  between  man  and  the  gorilla  has  not  been  bridged 
over;  and  there  are  others  in  the  geological  record  that  are 
equally  wide  and  abrupt. 

As  there  is  a  great  gap  between  the  beasts  of  the  field  and 
man,  so  there  is  an  unbridged  gulf  (unless  the  few  diminutive 
marsupials  of  the  Triassic  and  Jurassic  periods  should  be  re- 
garded as  furnishing  one  of  the  missing  links)  between  the  Rep- 
tilian forms  and  the  Birds  of  the  Secondary  Age  and  the  Mam- 
mals of  the  Tertiary.  Carnivorous  and  herbivorous  mammals, 
in  great  numbers,  and  of  many  species, — and  strangest  of  all,  the 
monkeys  — appear  upon  the  scene  at  the  base  of  the  Tertiary 
with  the  most  startling  abruptness — unheralded  and  with  no  evo- 
lutionary trumpet  to  sound  their  approach.f  The  uppermost 
Cretaceous  beds,  which  is  the  closing  member  of  the  Secondary, 
have  been  generally  supposed  to  represent  a  period  of  great  dis- 
turbance in  the  geological  history,  which  ^vas  concluded  from 
the  fact  that  in  Europe  and  elsewhere  the  Eocene  beds  of  the 
Tertiary  were  found  to  lie  unconformably,  on  the  tilted  or  crum- 
pled Cretaceous  beds.  It  was  conjectured  that  these  traces  of 
disturbance  indicated  a  lost  period  between  the  Cretaceous  and 
the  Eocene,  and  that  if  these  lost  leaves  could  be  recovered  the 
gap  in  the  succession  of  life  would  be  bridged  over  by  the  detec- 
tion of  the  intermediate  forms.     But   Prof  Hayden,  who,  as  you 

*Address  before  British  Association  in  1S76. 

f  In  the  oldest  Eocene  beds  (Wahsatch  beds  of  the  Green  river  and  San  Juan 
basins)  Cope  finds  eighty-seven  species  of  vertebrates,  two-thirds  of  which  are 
mammals.  In  the  Fort  Bridger  beds  of  the  Green  River  basin  (Middle  Eocene) 
Marsh  finds  150  species  of  vertebrates,  of  which  the  larger  number  are  mam-, 
mals,  some  Herbivora,  some  Carnivora,  some  Lemurine  monkeys.  Le  Conte's 
<Jeol.,  p.  495. 


22  Opening  of  the  Leivis  Brooks  Miisetmi. 


know,  has  been  actively  engaged  for  some  years  in  the  explora- 
tion of  our  Western  Territories,  finds  that  in  some  places,  espe- 
cially on  the  Plains,  a  continuous  series  of  conformable  rocks 
connects  the  two  eras.  "The  record,"  says  Le  Conte,  "seems  to 
be  continuous."  And  yet  here  there  is  the  same  sudden  and 
extraordinary  change  in  the  life-system  which  we  observe  in  the 
unconformable  strata  of  Europe.  "The  abruptness  of  the  trans- 
ition," says  Dana,  "is  astounding."*  Now  in  some  regions  the 
Cretaceous  beds  were  formed  in  deep-water,  and  we  could  not 
expect  ordinarily  to  find  remains  of  terrestrial  fossils  in  them ; 
but  this  is  not  true  of  the  Rocky  Mountain  or  Atlantic  border 
deposits  of  North  America,  nor  of  those  of  many  localities  on 
other  continents.  Le  Conte  observes  that  it  is  impossible  to 
explain  these  facts  on  the  theory  of  evolution  "  unless  we  admit 
periods  of  rapid  evohitio7i" f  or,  as  he  elsewhere  expresses  it, 
"paroxysms  of  evolution." 

As  there  is  a  break  between  the  Tertiary  and  the  later  Qua- 
ternary (the  Reign  of  Ice  intervening),  and  a  break  between  the 
Secondary  and  the  tertiary,  so  in  passing  from  the  Lower  to  the 
Upper  Silurian  and  Devonian,  the  seas  suddenly  swarm  with  gi- 
gantic and  highly-organized  fishes.  In  a  moment — in  the  twink- 
ling of  an  eye — with  no  suspicion  of  a  break  in  the  record — we 
pass  at  one  leap  from  the  Mollusks  and  Crustaceans  of  the  Lower 
Silurian  to  the  Sharks  and  Gar- Fishes  of  the  Upper  Silurian  and 
Devonian.  Some  of  these  fishes  were  from  twenty  to  thirty  feet 
in  length,  and  belonged  to  a  very  advanced  type  of  fishes,  being 
allied  to  the  Reptilian  forms.  "  It  is  impossible,"  says  Le  Conte, 
"to  overlook  the  comparative  suddenness  of  the  appearance  of  a 
new  class — fishes — and  a  new  department — vertebrates — of  the 
animal  kingdom."    "Observe,"  he  continues,  "that  at  the  horizon 

*  Manual  of  Geology,  last  edit.,  p.  602. 
I  Elements  of  Geol.,  p.  475. 


Mans  Age  in  the  World.  '  23 


of  appearance  in  the  Upper  Silurian,  there  is  no  apparent  break 
in  the  strata,  and  therefore  no  evidence  of  lost  record;  and  yet 
the  advance  is  immense.  It  is  impossible  to  account  for  this 
unless  we  admit  paroxysms  of  evolution,  &c."* 

But  there  is  yet  another  startling  apparition  in  the  succession 
of  palaeontological  forms :  if  we  go  back  to  the  Lower  Silurian 
resting  on  the  Archaean  or  Eozoic  rocks,  we  find  the  highly- 
organized  Trilobites  and  Cephalopods — heading,  as  it  were,  the 
long  succession  of  animal  life.  In  the  Archaean  rocks  we  find 
only  the  lowest  Protozoan  life  —  the  questionable,  systemless 
Eozoon  Canadense  ;'\  and  with  the  very  dawn  of  the  next  era 
we  find  "all  the  great  types  of  structure  except  the  vertebrate." 
"And  these,"  adds  Le  Conte,  who  believes  in  Evolution,  "not 
the  lowest  of  their  type,  as  might  have  been  expected,  but  already 
trilobites  among  the  Articulata  and  cephalopods  among  Mollusca 
— animals  luhich  can  hardly  be  regarded  as  lower  than  viidway  in 
the  animal  scaled  % 

As  the  facts  now  stand,  it  seems  to  me  impossible  to  reconcile 
them  with  Evolution  as  taught  by  the  disciples  of  Mr.  Darwin  in 
Europe.  To  evade  the  difficulty  our  American  Evolutionists  (in 
which  they  were  preceded  by  Mr.  St.  George  Mivart)  have  in- 
vented the  theory  of  Paj'oxysmal  Evolution — Evolution  by  leaps. 
There  was  a  leap  from  the  plant-like  Protozoan  to  the  huge  Crus- 
taceans with  their  great  many-lensed  eyes,  and  to  those  monster 
straight-shelled  nautili  or  cuttle-fishes  (some  of  them  fifteen  feet 
long)  which  were  the  scavengers  of  the  Silurian  seas.  There  was 
a  sudden  leap  from  these  Crustaceans  and  Mollusks,  with  no  inter- 

*  Elements  of  Geol.  p.  ^,1^. 

f  There  is  some  reason  to  believe  that  fossils  occur  in  the  Huronian  beds — 
the  upper  stratum  of  the  Archaean  ;  but  the  point  is  not  yet  settled.  This  Hu- 
ronian, it  is  thought,  may  prove  to  be  altered  Silurian.  Certain  alleged  discov- 
.  eries  have  been  made  in  New  England;  but  the  subject  has  not  as  yet  been 
thoroughly  studied. 

J  Elements  of  Geol.  p.  288. 


24  Opening  of  the  Lewis  Brooks  Museum. 


vening  forms,  to  the  monster  sharks  and  gar-fishes  of  the  Devo- 
nian. There  was  a  sudden  leap  from  the  Fish  to  the  Amphibian. 
There  was  a  sudden  leap  from  the  great  Saurians  of  the  Second- 
ary Age  to  the  abounding  mammalian  life  of  the  Tertiary  strata; 
and  finally,  by  a  similar  evolutionary  paroxysm,  some  ape-like 
organism,  about  the  close  of  the  Glacial  Epoch — quick  as  the 
re-adjusted  crystals  of  the  kaleidoscope — assumed  abruptly  the 
human  form.* 

*  These  abrupt  and  tremendous  changes  in  the  succession  of  geological  life 
are  fatal  to  the  theory  of  gradual  evolution.  In  the  first  place,  there  is  in  some 
of  the  instances  no  indication  of  any  missing  pages  from  the  record;  the  text 
seems  to  be  unmutilated  and  continuous.  This  is  notably  the  case  in  the  trans- 
ition from  the  crustaceans  and  mollusks  to  the  fishes. 

But,  in  the  second  place,  if  intermediate  forms  between  the  trilobite  and  the 
fish, or  the  ape  and  man,  once  existed,  what  has  become  of  them?  The  missing 
links,  if  such  there  were,  must  have  been  considerable  in  number,  and  the  indi- 
viduals representing  each  link  in  the  chain  must  have  existed  by  tens  of  thou- 
sands and  millions.  The  transitional  forms  must  have  been  a  hundred  times 
more  numerous  than  the  completed  type,  and  yet  we  find  perfect  trilobites  and 
perfect  fishes,  perfect  apes  and  perfect  men,  and  no  trilobites  in  transitu  to  fishes, 
and  no  apes  in  transitu  to  men — although  we  ought  to  meet  them  at  a  hundred 
points.  Where  are  the  intermediate  forms  between  birds  and  mammals?  We 
ought  to  find  hundreds  of  these  intermediate  forms,  with  imperfectly  developed 
organs;  if  they  existed,  there  is  no  reason  why  we  should  always  miss  just  these 
transitional  forms,  and  no  others.  If  we  had  missed  them  in  one  country,  we 
ought  to  find  them  in  another.  The  same  gaps  essentially  are  reproduced  in 
Europe,  Asia,  North  America,  South  America,  Africa,  and  Australia.  The 
alleged  pedigree  of  the  horse,  and  such  forms  as  the  archceopteryx,  and  the  many 
similar  discoveries  which  will  be  made,  do  not  seriously  touch  this  difficulty. 
The  great  chasms  to  which  I  have  referred  still  remain,  and  will  not  be  appre- 
ciably diminished  by  these  discoveries.  If  it  should  be  asserted  that  the  silver 
dollar  had  been  gradually  developed  by  some  natural  process  out  of  the  copper 
cent,  and  we  should  be  able  to  discover  only  one-cent  pieces,  two-cent  pieces, 
three-cent  pieces,  five-cent  pieces,  ten-cent  pieces,  quarters,  half-dollars,  and  dol- 
lars ;  and  if,  moreever,  exactly  the  same  pieces,  and  no  others,  were  found  in 
all  parts  of  the  world,  the  theory  would  have  to  be  abandoned;  because  it 
would  be  incredible,  if  the  four-cent  pieces,  the  six-cent  pieces,  the  seven-cent 
pieces,  the  eight  cent  pieces— the  thirty-cent  pieces,  the  forty-cent  pieces,  the 
seventy-cent  pieces,  &c. — once  existed  as  transitional  links,  that  we  should  al- 
ways miss  just  these  particular  pieces,  and  always  find  just  the  others  in  all 
parts  of  the  world.     Unless  we  could  assign  some  good    reason   for  the   disap- 


Man's  Age  in  the  World.   '  25 


This  is  the  present  position  of  the  question.  A  common 
ground  has  been  reached  on  which  Evolutionists  and  non-Evolu- 
tionists can  stand — the  sudden  apparition  of  new  and  widely- 
diver<^ent  types.  As  to  the  origin  of  these  new  forms  Science 
knows  nothing.  The  field  for  conjecture  is  open.  Those  who 
believe  in  specific  acts  of  creation,*  on  the  ground  of  a  Divine 
Revelation  on  the  subject,  may  hold  their  opinion ;  those  who  do 
not  believe  in  the  revelation  may  refer  the  apparition  of  the 
Trilobite,  the  Shark,  the  Saurian,  the  Tapir,  and  Man,  to  a  cer- 
tain "  internal  force  or  tendency,"  or  to  a  sudden  change  in  the 
climate,  the  physical  geography,  the  atmosphere,  or  some  abnor- 
mal natural  cause,  deemed  by  them  sufficient  to  produce  the 
results. 

Our  present  business  is  with  Man  :  that  he  appeared  suddenly, 
as  the  evidence  stands,  is  generally  conceded.  It  has  been  men- 
tioned also  that,  according  to  Prof  Virchow,  the  first  human 
skulls  which  we  encounter  are  remarkable  for  their  large  cerebral 
cavity.  To  the  same  purport  Dr.  Pruner-Bey,  speaking  of  the 
skulls  which  were  obtained  from  the  palaeolithic  station  of  Solu- 
tre,  in  Eastern  France,  remarks,  that  we  find  here  "  no  approach 
to  the  Simians — Man  was  constituted  man  in  the  full  force  of  the 
term."  Dr.  Broca  bears  the  same  testimony  as  to  the  skulls  from 
the  Cro-Magnon  cave  at  Les  Eyzies,  as  does  Prof  Owen  with 
regard  to  the  skulls  obtained  from  the  rock-shelter  of  Bruniquel. 
The  celebrated  Engis  skull,  which  was  found  in  Belgium  under  a 
floor  of  stalagmite,  associated  with  bones  of  the  rhinoceros,  mam- 

pearance  of  all  the  missing  pieces,  we  should  be  compelled  to  conclude  that 
they  never  existed.  In  that  case,  if  we  still  held  to  the  doctrine  of  evolution, 
we  should  have  to  adopt  the  paroxysmal  evolution  of  Mivart  and  Clarence 
King,  and  assert  that  the  quarter  was  developed  out  of  the  ten-cent  piece  by  a 
paroxysmal  act,  and  the  dollar  out  of  the  half-dollar  by  a  yet  more  violent  pro- 
cess.    This  of  course  is  merely  an  illustration. 

*  Which,  in  some  of  the  stages,  need  not  exclude  a  basis  of  pre-existing  animal 
or  vegetable  life. 


26  Opening  of  the  Lczvis  Brooks  Mjisewn. 


moth,  &€.,  is,  says  Prof.  Huxley,  "a  fair  average  skull,  which 
might  have  belonged  to  a  philosopher,  or  might  have  contained 
the  thoughtless  brains  of  a  savage."  The  Neanderthal  skull, 
about  which  so  much  has  been  written,  has  a  capacity  of  75  cubic 
inches,  greater  than  the  average  Malay,  and  double  that  of  the 
largest  gorilla  skull  known.  A  good  deal  of  misplaced  discus- 
sion was  wasted  on  this  skull  by  Prof  Huxley,  Lyell,  Schaaffhau- 
sen,  and  others,  as  there  is  no  evidence  whatever  of  its  antiquity. 

Let  us  advance  a  step  farther: — we  have  seen  that  man  appears 
in  Western  Europe  unheralded  by  any  earlier  anthropoid  forms, 
and  "constituted  man  in  the  full  force  of  the  term:"  how  was  it 
in  the  East — for  man  originated  there?  The  affinities  of  the 
Cave-Dwellers  of  Europe  with  the  modern  Eskimo  are  admitted 
by  Prof  Dawkins  and  other  writers  on  the  subject  ;*  they  both 
belong  to  the  great  Turanian  family — the  great  Uralo-Altaic  or 
Turko-Finnic  race — the  ancient  Asiatic  Scythians — the  great 
Mongol  race,  which  passed  into  North  America — and  which  is 
recognized  again  as  one  of  the  original  elements  of  the  primitive 
inhabitants  of  Chalda'a  or  Babylonia.  The  climate  of  Europe  at 
this  time  was  too  cold  for  the  Troglodytes  to  have  originated 
there :  it  is  generally  conceded  that  the  original  home  of  the  race 
was  in  Central  Asia.  The  Egyptians,  it  is  remarked  by  Brugsch 
Bey,  migrated  from  the  centre  of  Asia. 

Now  the  most  astounding  fact  in  all  this  matter  is  that  in 
Babylonia,  on  the  Lower  Euphrates,  and  in  Egypt,  where  the 
Egyptologists  and  Assyriologists  have  obtained,  of  late  years, 
such  interesting  results,  man  suddenly  appears,  and  the  very 
first  signal  which  he  throws  out  are  those  vast  Temple-Towers 
of  the  Chaldaean  Plain  and  those  yet  more  wonderful  Pyramids 
which  are  perhaps  the  greatest  structures  ever  erected  by  man. 
This   is  the  first  glimpse  which   we  catch  of  man  in  the  East. 

*  Dawkins'  Cave-Hunting,  p.  358;  Quarterly  Review,  Oct.  1876. 


Man's  Age  in  the  World.      "  27 


In  the  West  we  found  him  a  fully  developed  man,  but  a  savage: 
in  the  East  he  intrudes  upon  the  stage  in  the  habiliments  of 
civilization.  Strange  as  it  seems,  we  meet  him  at  the  very  out- 
set in  the  character  of  a  great  Builder,  and  fashioning  works  of 
statuary  whose  anatomical  correctness  is  not  surpassed  by  the 
figures  of  Michael  Angelo.  There  was  a  knowledge  of  the 
cuneiform  writing  from  the  very  first  in  Babylonia,  and  the 
hieroglyphics  of  Egypt  were  used  in  the  Fourth  Dynasty,  at 
which  time  they  had  already  assumed  the  cursive  form. 

A  more  modest  picture  is  presented  us  in  the  first  glimpse  that 
we  catch  of  the  primitive  Aryans  in  their  early  seats  on  the  Oxus 
and  Jaxartes ;  they  are  not  building  any  great  cities,  but  they  are 
settled  in  villages  with  a  kingly  government,  tilling  the  soil,  con- 
tracting marriages,  fortifying  their  towns,  harnessing  horses  and 
oxen  to  carriages,  with  helmets  and  shields  and  swords  of 
bronze,  and  worshipping  the  holy  Ahuramazda,  "creator  of 
existing  worlds,  truth-telling,"  from  whom  proceeded  "the 
creative  Word,  which  existed  before  all  things,  *  *  *  having 
its  germ  in  truth." 

Up  to  the  present  time  Archaeology  has  sought  in  vain  for 
any  earlier  trace  of  man  in  these  regions.  In  Egypt  and  Baby- 
lonia they  have  succeeded  in  finding  stone  implements,  but  they 
have  been  found  there  (in  Babylonia  very  rude  ones)  in  the 
tombs,  associated  with  objects  of  an  advanced  civilization.  Or 
they  have  been  found  on  the  surface  of  the  ground  in  the  valley 
of  the  Nile,  and  were  in  use,  according  to  M.  Mariette,  not  only 
in  the  Pharaonic  but  even  in  the  Greek  period.*  There  is  no 
eindence  of  a  Stone  Age  of  any  sort  in  Egypt  or  Babylonia,  and 
no  trace  of  the  Palaeolithic  or  First  Stone  Age. 

*  Archiv  fur  Anthropologic,  Januar,  1876,  s.  250;  Materiaux  pour  1'  Histoire 
de  r  Homme,  1874,  p.  17;  Smith's  Ancient  Hist,  of  East,  Eng.  edit.,  vol.  I,, 
p.  210;  Rawlinson's  Five  Great  Monarchies,  2nd  ed.  I,  pp.  95,  119,  120. 


"28  Opening  of  the  Lciuis  Brooks  Museum. 


But  it  is  obvious  that  if  man  has  been  on  the  earth  one  hun- 
dred, or  two  hundred,  thousand  years,  he  ought  to  have  left  his 
rehcs  in  the  valleys  of  the  Nile,  Euphrates,  and  Tigris.  No 
palaeolithic  implements  associated  with  bones  of  extinct  animals, 
have  been  found  in  any  of  these  countries.  And  it  is  impossible 
that  man  could  have  reached  the  civilization  of  the  Third  Chal- 
•daean  and  the  Fourth  Egyptian  dynasties  without  leaving  his 
monuments  and  his  implements  strewed  all  along  the  way,  if  he 
was  actually  living  in  these  localities  tens  of  thousands  of  years 
before  the  date  assigned  to  Menes. 

This  fact,  that  there  is  nothing  in  Egypt  behind  the  Pyramids, 
and  nothing  in  Babylonia  behind  the  bricks  of  Erech  and  Calneh, 
cuts  below  the  whole  evidence  for  the  antiquity  of  man  in  Cen- 
tral and  Western  Europe ;  but  it  is  more  satisfactory  to  give  our 
attention  directly  to  the  remains  of  human  art  found  in  Europe 
under  circumstances  which  have  naturally  occasioned  a  belief  in 
their  great  antiquity.  Of  course  in  this  brief  address  the  points 
must  rather  be  only  rapidly  touched,  than  elaborately  discussed. 

It  is  alleged  that  the  prehistoric  period  is  divided  into  three 
ages — the  Age  of  Stone,  the  Age  of  Bronze,  and  the  Age  of 
Iron;  and  the  Ag-e  of  Stone  is  further  subdivided  into  the  Palae- 
olithic  (or  Old  Stone)  Age  and  the  Neolithic  (or  Polished  Stone) 
Age.  The  Polished  Stone  Age  is  said  to  have  been  in  progress 
in  Europe  some  six  or  seven  thousand  years  ago ;  the  Palaeolithic 
Age  goes  back  one  hundred,  or  two  hundred,  or  five  hundred, 
thousand  years.  The  relics  of  the  Stone  Age  are  found  in  the 
ancient  Stone-Graves,  in  the  Lake-Dwellings,  the  Shell-Mounds, 
the  Peat,  in  Caves,  and  in  the  so-called  drift  of  the  River-Valleys. 

A  few  years  ago  it  was  claimed  that  those  mysterious  Stone 
Circles  and  other  Rude  Stone  Monuments  which  occur  in  so 
many  parts  of  the  world  —  in  Europe,  Asia,  Northern  Africa, 
Peru — belonged   to  a  very  remote   past,  and   Stonehenge  was 


Man's  Age  in  the  World.      '  29' 


affirmed  in  1870  in  the  British  Quarterly  Reviezu,  to  be  as  old  as 
the  foundations  of  Memphis,  while  Carnac  and  Locmariaker,  in 
Brittany,  it  was  said,  "have  presented  a  yet  more  startling  mes- 
sage from  the  depths  of  their  hoary  antiquity."  Stonehenge, 
which  is  assigned  to  the  Bronze  Age,  would,  of  course,  be  com- 
paratively recent  by  the  side  of  the  chambered  tumuli  of  Carnac, 
which  are  assigned  to  the  Stone  Age;  and  if  this  so-called  Dru- 
idical  circle,  with  its  hewn  stones,  is  as  old  as  the  Egyptian 
monarchy,  the  rude  stones  of  the  great  circle  of  Avebury  and 
the  avenues  of  Carnac  must  have  been  erected  several  thousand 
years  before  the  Pyramid-Builders  entered  the  valley  of  the  Nile. 

But  it  is  now  pretty  well  ascertained  that  the  majority  of  these 
structures  in  Europe  and  North  Africa  are  post-Roman,  and 
none  of  them  it  is  probable,  almost  certain,  date  farther  back 
than  six  or  seven  centuries  before  our  era.  Implements  of  iron 
have  been  found  in  the  very  oldest.  * 

In  1854  the  learned  world  was  startled  by  the  announcement 
that  traces  of  an  entirely  unknown  ar^d  very  ancient  population 
had  been  found  in  Switzerland.  In  one  of  the  lakes  of  this 
country  the  first  discovery  had  been  made  of  the  remains  of  the 
early  habitations  of  the  Lake-Dwellers.  Many  similar  dis- 
coveries were  afterwards  made,  not  only  in  Switzerland,  but 
throughout  Europe.  Ancient  piles  were  discovered,  sometimes 
nearly  a  quarter  of  a  mile  from  shore,  driven  into  the  bottom  of 
the  lakes,  and  numerous  implements  of  stone  and  bone,  with 
fragments  of  pottery,  animal  bones,  and  other  objects  were 
dredged  up  from  the  lake-mud.  Agassiz  exclaimed  (and  we  all 
know  the  caution  of  that  truly  great  man) — Agassiz,  in  a  lecture 
before  the  Boston  Natural  History  Society,  as  late  as  1868, 
exclaimed,  that    "  Man  was    at  last   connected   with    geological 

*See  "Recent  Origin  of  Man,"  chap,  ix.;  Archiv  fur  Anthrop.,  Januar,  1876, 
s.  283,  284,  285. 


30  Opening  of  the  Lewis  Brooks  Mtcseum. 


phenomena!"  and  Sir  Charles  Lyell  and  Sir  John  Lubbock  esti- 
mated that  this  newly-discovered  race  had  lived  in  Switzerland 
at  least  6,000  or  7,000  years  ago. 

But  the  antiquity  of  these  remains  also,  like  that  of  the  Stone- 
Graves,  has  vanished  before  more  sober  investigations.  It  has 
been  observed  that  the  lake  dwellings  are  delineated  on  the 
great  Historical  Column  of  Trajan  at  Rome,  which  was  erected 
to  commemorate  the  victories  of  that  Emperor  over  the  Dacians 
in  the  year  114.  They  are  also  referred  to  by  Herodotus  and 
Hippocrates,  and  in  numbers  of  them  Roman  coins  or  tiles  and 
pottery,  and  swords  of  iron  and  bronze,  have  been  found.  Cru- 
cibles for  melting  bronze  have  been  found  in  the  lowest  bed  ot 
one  of  the  very  oldest — Robenhausen  ;*  and  Mediterranean 
coral  and  plants,  as  well  as  objects  of  glass  or  metal,  have  been 
found  in  others  regarded  as  being  the  most  distinctively  of  the 
Stone  Age  period.  Indeed  it  is  ascertained  that  these  lacustrine 
habitations  existed  at  Noville  and  Chavannes  in  Switzerland  as 
late  as  the  6th  century  of  our  era:  in  another  in  the  Lake  of 
Paladru,  in  France,  a  number  of  objects  of  the  Carlovingian 
epoch  were  found;  and  in  Pomerania  and  Sweden  it  is  now 
known  that  they  were  occupied  as  late  as  the  nth  and  13th 
centuries. t 

The  Shell-Mounds  on  the  Danish  coasts  were  cited  too  by 
such  writers  as  Lubbock  and  Lyell  as  memorials  of  a  vague  and 
indefinite  past.  Worsaae  estimated  them  to  be  so  old  that  he  re- 
ferred them  to  the  Palaeolithic  Age,  and  Sir  John  Lubbock  called 
them  post- Palaeolithic,  meaning  thereby  pre-Neolithic.  But  metal 
has  since  been  found  in  one  which  appears  from  the  extreme  rude- 

*Dr.  Keller's  Lake-Dwellings,  ist  ed.,  trans.,  p.  57;  Quarterly  Review,  Oc- 
tober,  1868. 

fComptes  Rendus,  Acad,  des  Sciences,  1872,  p.  204;  Materiaux  pour  1' 
Histoire  de  1'  Homme,  1874,  p.  320;  Archiv  fiir  Anthrop.,  August,  1875;  Dr. 
Keller's  Lake-Dwel.,  2d  Eng.  edit.,  vol.  i,  629. 


Man^s  Age  in  the  World.  31 


ness  of  the  stone  implements  to  be  one  of  the  very  oldest,  and  a 
shell-mound  in  one  of  the  Channel  Islands,  between  France  and 
England,  revealed,  along  with  implements  of  stone,  Roman  pot- 
tery and  objects  of  iron.  So  that  the  Kjokken-moddings  and 
Lake-Dwellings  as  well  as  the  Cromlechs  and  Dolmens,  may  be 
regarded  as  tacitly  withdrawn  from  the  evidences  for  the  an- 
tiquity of  man. 

You  are  aware  that  a  good  deal  of  prominence  is  given  in  the 
discussion  of  this  subject  to  the  recognition  in  Prehistoric 
Archaeology  of  the  Three  Ages,  to  which  I  have  referred — the 
Age  of  Stone,  the  Age  of  Bronze,  and  the  Age  of  Iron.  These 
distinctions  have,  however,  been  greatly  exaggerated.  As  I 
have  already  remarked,  there  was  no  Stone  Age  in  Egypt  or 
Babylonia.  There  appears  to  have  been  no  Stone  Age  in  Africa. 
Iron  has  apparently  been  known  there  from  the  most  remote 
times.  There  was  no  Stone  Age  from  the  River  Kama  in  Rus- 
sia to  Lake  Baikal  in  Eastern  Asia — among  the  great  Uralo- 
Altaic  or  Mongol  race.*  Stone  and  bronze  were  used  together 
by  the  ancient  Mexicans  and  Peruvians,  when  these  continents 
were  first  visited  by  the  Spaniards,  as  they  were  by  the  ancient 
Trojans,  both  before  and  after  the  period  described  in  the 
Homeric  poems,  f  Implements  of  stone,  bronze  and  iron,  were 
all  found  in  the  ancient  ditches  before  Alise,  in  France,  where 
Caesar  captured  Vercingetorix  and  his  great  army.;};  They  are 
commingled  in  the  graves  between  Trevoux  and  Riottier,  on 
the  Saone,  where  Csesar  fought  with  the  Helvetii.  §     And  within 

*  Epoch  of  Mammoth,  pp.  219,  221,  229,  230,  233  ;  Expedit.  to  Zambesi,  by 
Dr.  Livingstone,  pp.  561,562;  Descrip.  Socio!.,  Herbert  Spencer,  Asiatic  Races 
and  African  Races. 

f  Epoch  of  Mammoth,  232,  293  et  seq.;  Prescott's  Conq.  of  Mex.  I,  139, 
441,  442;  Conq.  of  Peru,  I,  152;  Schliemann's  "Troy  and  its  Remains,"  pas- 
sim. 

X  Palafittes  of  Lake  of  Neufchatel,  trans.  Smithson.  Rep.,  1S65,  p.  400. 

i  Napoleon  III.'s  "  Life  of  Csesar,"   II,  p.  65. 


32  Opening  of  the  Leans  Brooks  Musenm. 


a  few  years  past  in  the  great  Merovingian  cemetery  at  Caranda, 
in  the  department  of  Aisne,  in  France,  thousands  of  flint  knives 
and  arrow-heads  occur  along  with  the  iron  swords  and  bronze 
jewellery  of  the  warlike  Franks.* 

Up  to  this  point  there  is  no  difficulty.  The  evidences  for  the 
antiquity  of  man  derived  from  the  Stone- Graves,  the  Lake- 
Dwellings,  the  Shell-Mounds,  or  from  any  supposed  high  an- 
tiquity for  the  Polished  Stone  Age,  all  fail,  and  are  readily  dis- 
posed of 

*  Materiaux,  1875,  p.  108. 

The  discovery  of  the  flint  implements  in  the  Babylonian  and  Egyptian 
tombs,  along  with  implements  of  metal,  shows  at  once  that  the  flint  imple- 
ments in  the  European  stone-graves,  lake-dwellings,  iv:c.,  do  not  imply  a  re- 
mote antiquity.  Of  course  the  metals  were  much  later  in  reaching  Western 
Europe  than  they  were  in  reaching  Egypt.  Among  the  Swiss  mountains 
and  in  Britain  stone  implements  continued  to  be  used  after  the  Christian 
era.  We  know  approximately  the  date  of  the  Babylonian  and  Egyptian 
tombs  :  when  the  primitive  tribes  moved  from  their  Asiatic  seats  into  the 
forests  of  Europe,  they  left  the  metals  behind  them.  They  used  stone  in  a 
little  while  exclusively.  They  had  no  metal,  and  were  too  ignorant,  weak,  and 
scattered,  to  find  it  and  to  work  it.  If  the  builders  of  the  temple-towers  of  the 
ChaldiEan  plain  used  stone  implements  [along  with  metal],  the  hunters  of  the 
Reindeer  in  the  valley  of  the  Vezere  would  use  stone  weapons  exclusively,  and 
it  would  be  long  before  metal  reached  their  descendants. 

This  is  illustrated  yet  more  vividly  by  the  relic  beds  at  Troy  described  by  Dr. 
Schliemann.  There  are  five  successive  beds,  the  highest  being  that  of  the  Hel- 
lenic Period,  dating  after  650  B.  C.  In  all  the  other  beds  both  stone  and  bronze 
(no  iron)  occur.  The  Homeric  Trojans  were  far  more  familiar  with  stone  knives 
than  they  were  with  metal  knives.  The  chiefs  of  course  had  bronze  armour, 
offensive  and  defensive. 

In  the  third  bed  (ascending)  the  implements  are  almost  exclusively  stone. 
This  was  after  the  Trojan  War — conjecturally  about  1,000  B.  C.  Some  of  the 
neighbouring  tribes  (ruder  than  the  Trojans,  but  of  the  same  blood)  occupied 
the  site  of  the  devastated  city  (there  are  abundant  traces  of  a  conflagration)  after 
the  war.  Perhaps  they  were  settlers  from  Greece — possibly  some  Scythian  irrup- 
tion. But  the  fact  remains,  that  in  Asia  Minor,  at  a  period  when  there  was  an 
advanced  civilization  from  the  Tigris  to  the  Mediterranean — about  the  time 
when  King  David  reigned  in  Jerusalem — the  site  of  Troy  was  inhabited  by  a 
stone-using  people.  How  was  it  at  the  same  date  in  the  marshes  of  the  Somme 
Valley  ? 


Mans  Age  in  the  World.    '  33 


There  is  a  much  more  difficult  branch  of  the  subject — the 
Palccolithic  Age.  Human  implements  (as  is  claimed)  were  found 
by  M.  Boucher  de  Perthes  in  1844  in  the  river-gravel  deposit  of 
the  Somme  River  in  a  geological  position  assigned  to  the  drift 
period,  and  in  association  with  the  bones  of  the  elephant,  rhino- 
ceros, cave-bear,  hyaena,  reindeer,  and  other  extinct  animals. 
Since  that  time  a  great  many  similar  discoveries  have  been  made, 
and  implements  of  bone,  as  well  as  stone,  evidently  prepared  by 
man,  have  also  been  found,  associated  with  the  same  extinct  ani- 
mals, in  caves,  sometimes  under  solid  floors  of  stalagmite ;  and  in 
these  caves  there  have  been  found  also  among  the  relics  referred 
to  delineations  on  horn  and  bone  and  stone,  some  of  them  beau- 
tifully executed,  of  the  reindeer  and  other  extinct  animals. 

The  case  of  the  River-Gravel  is  much  the  most  difficult.  In 
that  of  the  Caves  the  two  principal  difficulties  are  the  presence  of 
the  extinct  animals  and  the  floors  of  stalagmite — at  Kent's 
Cavern,  in  Devonshire,  there  are  two  floors,  one  beneath  the 
other,  and  both  above  the  relics,  and  the  lower  one  from  5  to  12 
feet  thick.  The  first  difficulty — that  of  the  extinct  animals — is 
common  to  the  gravels  and  the  caves ;  the  stalagmite,  therefore, 
is  the  special  point  about  the  caves  requiring  explanation,  if  it  is 
insisted  that  the  relics  are  recent.  At  the  meeting  of  the  British 
Association,  in  1871,  Mr.  Vivian  remarked  that,  at  the  present 
rate  of  the  formation  of  stalagmite,  it  would  take  1,000,000 
years  for  the  stalagmite  in  Kent's  Cavern  to  form ;  and  Mr.  Al- 
fred Russell  Wallace  and  Mr.  Pengelly  assign  to  the  relics 
beneath  the  floors  an  antiquity  of  500,000  and  750,000  years. 
Lyell  also  lays  great  stress  on  these  floors  as  an  evidence  for  the 
antiquity  of  man,  as  does  Mr.  John  Evans.  But  more  exact 
observations  have  also  reversed  this  verdict.  Stalagmite  is  now 
forming  in  the  Ingleborough  Cave  in  Yorkshire  at  the  rate  of 
nearly  one-third  of  an  inch  per  annum,  and  Mr.  Boyd  Dawkins, 


34  Opening  of  the  Lewis  Brooks  Museum. 


who  reported  the  fact,  refers  to  the  matter  in  his  work  on 
"Cave-Hunting"  as  follows:  "It  is  evident  from  this  instance  of 
rapid  accumulation  that  the  value  of  a  layer  of  stalagmite,  in 
measuring  the  antiquity  of  deposits  below  it,  is  comparatively 
little.  *  *  At  the  rate  of  a  quarter  of  an  inch  per  annum, 
twenty  feet  of  stalagmite  might  be  formed  in  a  thousand  years."  * 

Similar  observations  have  been  made  at  the  caves  of  Matlock 
and  Poole's  Hole,  and  in  the  Gibraltar  caves  explored  by  Capt. 
Brome,  and  there  is  at  San  Filippo,  in  Italy,  a  solid  mass  of 
travertin  (which  is  formed  just  like  stalagmite)  thirty  feet  in 
thickness,  which  was  deposited  in  twenty  years,  f  The  stalag- 
mite, like  the  lake  dwellings  and  shell-mounds,  is,  therefore,  I 
think,  also  given  up,  and  we  may  confine  ourselves  to  the  pheno- 
mena presented  in  the  river-gravels. 

The  flint  implements  which  are  referred  to  man,  are  found  in 
a  bed  of  gravel  in  the  Valley  of  the  Somme  at  a  depth  of  from 
15  to  25  feet  from  the  surface,  the  gravel  deposit  itself  sometimes 
attaining  a  thickness  of  15  or  20  feet,  and  being  overlaid  by  beds 
of  sandy  marl,  angular  gravel,  and  brick-earth  or  loess.  The 
gravels  range  from  the  bottom  of  the  valley  as  high  as  80  or  100 
feet  above  the  present  level  of  the  stream,  and  the  implements 
occur  alike  in  the  upper  as  well  as  the  lower  gravels.  The  val- 
ley at  Amiens  is  a  mile  or  a  mile  and  a  half  wide ;  and  you  will 
therefore  perceive  that  when  the  upper  gravels  were  deposited 
the  water  of  the  river  must  have  flowed  80  or  100  feet  higher 
than  it  does  now,  and  must  have  rolled  over  points  now  half  a 
mile  and  more  distant  from  the  present  stream.  At  this  distance 
from  the  river,  high  up  on  the  slopes  of  the  valley,  twenty  feet 
and  more  beneath  the  surface,  we  find  the  famous  flint  axes  of 
St.  Acheul.     The  age  of  these  axes  is  that  of  the  bed  of  gravel, 

*  Cave-Hunting,  p.  39-41. 

•j-  See  Lyell's  "  Principles"  I,  399;  also  Le  Conte's  Elements  Geol.,  p.  71-72. 


Mans  Age  2?i  the  World.  35 


In  the  valley  bottom  there  is  a  bed  of  peat  resting  on  the 
gravel,  which  sometimes  attains  a  thickness  of  twenty-five  or 
thirty  feet,  and  which  is  of  course  more  recent  than  the  subjacent 
gravel.  In  this  bed  of  peat  we  find  relics  of  the  Middle  Ages,  of 
the  Roman  and  Gallo-Roman  periods,  and  of  the  Age  of  Pol- 
ished Stone.  The  fauna  represented  in  it  corresponds  with  the 
present  or  recent  fauna  of  the  countrv. 

These  are  some  of  the  indicia  of  the  vast  amount  of  time 
which  appears  to  have  elapsed  since  man  hunted  the  mammoth 
in  this  valley ;  but  they  are  not  all.  The  theory  of  Sir  C.  Lyell 
and  Mr.  Evans  and  Sir  John  Lubbock  is  that  the  river  has  exca- 
vated this  broad  and  deep  valley  since  the  high-level  gravels 
were  laid  down ;  that  the  river,  some  million  years  or  more  ago 
perhaps,  ran  some  loo  feet  higher  than  its  present  bed,  and  that 
it  has  gradually  and  slowly  cut  its  way  down  to  its  present  posi- 
tion.    Man  was  living  when  this  work  of  excavation  commenced. 

There  is  yet  another  great  fact  implying  the  lapse  of  ages 
since  these  axes  were  manufactured.  There  has  been  a  great 
change  in  the  physical  geography  of  the  country.  The  French 
coast  on  the  north  is  now  loo  feet  higher  above  the  sea -level 
than  it  was  at  that  time,  and  so  it  is  across  the  channel  in  Eng- 
land on  the  coast  of  Hampshire.  Indeed  it  is  asserted  that 
during  the  Palaeolithic  Age  England  was  united  to  the  Continent 
— that  the  bed  of  the  North  Sea  between  England  and  Holland 
was  a  great  undulating  plain,  traversed  from  south  to  north  by  a 
mighty  river,  which  united  the  waters  of  the  Thames  and  the 
Rhine  into  a  common  trunk,  and  discharged  them  into  the 
Northern  Ocean.  Europe  and  Africa,  at  the  same  time,  were 
united  by  a  bridge  of  land  from  Sicily  to  Cape  Bon.  Is  it 
strange  that  even  cautious  geologists,  like  Lyell  and  Evans 
End  Prestwich,  and  even  Dana,  with  these  facts  before  them, 
should  have  received  the  impression  that  long  ages,  only  to  be 


36  Opening  of  the  Lewis  Brooks  Afusetim. 


estimated  on  the  geological  scale,  have  elapsed  since  the  ances- 
tors of  our  American  Eskimo  gazed  from  their  primeval  caves  in 
Europe  upon  these  scenes  ? 

If  man  is  recent,  we  have,  as  appears  from  what  has  been  said,, 
in  connection  with  the  presentation  offered  by  the  river-gravel, 
the  four  following  difficulties  to  explain :  i .  The  formation  of  the 
Peat;  2.  The  alleged  excavation  of  the  valleys,  and  the  enor- 
mous mass  of  gravel  and  loess  deposited ;  3.  The  great  change 
in  physical  geography ;  4.  The  presence  of  the  extinct  animals. 
I  shall  address  myself  briefly  to  these  in  order: 

I.  The  Peat. — This,  as  stated,  is  sometimes  twenty-five  or 
thirty  feet  thick,  and  lies  on  the  gravel.  Boucher  de  Perthes,^ 
with  the  apparent  concurrence  of  Lyell  and  Lubbock,  estimate 
30,000  years  for  the  growth  of  this  peat  alone — which  would  only 
take  us  to  the  Neolithic  Age. 

There  are,  however,  some  tolerably  precise  data  going  to  show 
that  Boucher  de  Perthes'  estimate  is  not  correct.  There  are  found 
in  the  peat  the  undecayed  and  erect  stumps  of  the  birch  tree, 
three  or  four  feet  high.  Now  birch  stumps,  as  Dr.  Andrews  has 
remarked,  will  not  endure  exposure  in  a  damp  locality  more  than 
fifty  years  without  decay.  'Oak  stumps  would  not  last  more  than 
a  hundred  years.  The  peat,  therefore,  must  have  covered  up 
these  stumps  before  they  had  time  to  decay — that  is,  it  must  have 
grown  three  or  four  feet  in  fifty  years,  which  is  six  feet  in  a  cen- 
tury. At  one-fourth  this  rate  the  whole  thirty  feet  might  have 
formed  in  2,000  years.  A  coin  of  the  Emperor  Gordian  was 
found  in  the  peat  at  Groningen,  in  Holland,  at  the  depth  of  thirty 
feet,  and  in  Ireland  brass  spurs,  implements  of  iron,  vessels  con- 
taining butter,  shoes,  and  other  articles,  have  been  found  at  fifteen 
and  twenty  feet.*    In  this  very  Abbeville  peat  Roman  amphorae, 

*See  many  instances  cited  in  "The  Epoch  of  the  Mammoth,"  p.  307,  et  seq  ; 
Steele  on  Peat-Moss,  pp.  282-85  ;  Phil.  Trans,  of  Royal  Soc.  of  London,  vol. 
xxvii ;    Sir  W.  R.  Wilde's  Catalogue  Antiq.  etc.  in  Royal  Irish  Acad. 


Man's  Age  in  the  World.  37 


iron  and  bronze  implements,  objects  belonging  to  the  epoch  of 
the  Lower  Empire,  have  been  found  at  great  depths,  and  Lyell 
himself,  in  his  "  Principles  of  Geology,"  mentions  that  a  boat 
loaded  with  Roman  bricks  was  found  at  Abbeville  at  the  very 
bottom  of  the  peat  bed.*  The  peat,  therefore,  need  not  detain 
us. 

2.  The  Excavation  of  the  Valley  and  the  Beds  of  Gravel  and 
Loess. — I  have  stated  that  the  English  geologists  believe  that 
man  was  living  in  the  Somme  and  Thames  valleys  when  the 
high-level  gravels  were  deposited  by  the  rivers,  and  that  he  con- 
tinued to  live  there  and  witnessed  the  gradual  excavation  of  the 
valleys  by  the  streams. 

Now  the  Somme  Valley  at  Abbeville  and  Amiens  is,  as  already 
mentioned,  a  mile  or  a  mile  and  a  half  wide,  and  about  200  feet 
deep.  The  river  is  about  50  feet  wide — one-half  the  size  of  the 
Rivanna.  From  its  source  to  its  mouth  its  total  length  is  124 
miles,  and  the  fall  is  1.77  feet  per  mile.  When  the  alleged  work 
of  excavation  commenced,  this  little  stream  was  running  140  feet 
higher,  on  an  almost  dead  level,  and  the  fall  per  mile  was  then 
about  seven  inches.  The  work  it  had  to  do  was  to  sweep  the 
vast  volume  of  chalk  from  the  valley,  roll  its  flints  into  gravel 
and  sand,  and  deposit  these  gravels  all  over  the  valley  in  beds 
sometimes  of  20  feet  thickness.  Some  of  the  gravels  are  larger 
than  a  man's  head,  and  there  are  sandstone  boulders  weighing  a 
ton.  Could  a  little  stream,  probably  not  more  than  half  an  inch 
•deep,  with  a  fall  of  seven  inches  to  the  mile,  perform  such  a 
work?  To  my  mind  it  is  just  one  of  those  hypotheses  which 
needs  only  to  be  plainly  stated  to  be  immediately  rejected  as 
incredible. 

The  true  source  of  the  gravel  and  loess  deposit  which  we  see 

*  Lyell's  "Principles,"  12th  edit.,  ii,  512.  Antiquites  Celtiques  et  Ante-dilu- 
viennes  (M.  Boucher  de  Perthes),  i,  pp.  54,  155,  1S6,  201,  213,  447. 


38  Opening  of  the  Lewis  Brooks  Museum. 


in  the  river-valleys  of  Europe  and  this  country,  is  the  Palceolithic 
Flood — what  Dr.  Andrews  designates  as  the  Flood  of  the  Loess, 
whose  traces  are  abundant  in  India,  and  in  the  valleys  of  the 
Tiber,  the  Rhine,  the  Mississippi,  and  the  James,  as  well  as  in 
France  and  Southern  England.  I  think  this  is  the  almost  univer- 
sal opinion  out  of  England.  M.  Boucher  de  Perthes  himself 
attributed  the  phenomena  to  a  cataclysm.  M.  d'  Orbigny,  reject- 
ing the  theory  of  marine  action,  referred  them  to  immense  inun- 
dations of  fresh  water.  M.  Dupont,  in  his  celebrated  Report  to 
the  Belgian  Government  on  the  Belgian  Caves,  affirms  as  a  mat- 
ter not  admitting  of  dispute,  that  the  contemporaries  of  the 
mammoth  were  overwhelmed  by  a  deluge,  which  must  have 
covered  nearly  the  whole  of  Belgium.  So  M.  Belgrand  (who  is 
represented  by  Prof  Busk  to  have  enjoyed  unusual  opportunities 
for  studying  this  subject),  in  his  work  on  "Le  Bassin  Parisien 
aux  Ages  Ante-historiques,"  remarks  that  the  floods  of  the  Palae- 
olithic times  were  extremely  violent,  and  that  the  amount  of  rain- 
fall was  so  great  that  it  rolled  on  the  surface  of  the  most  per- 
meable soils.  *  Prof  Dawson  of  Montreal,  Prof  Andrews  of 
Chicago,  and  Mr.  Alfred  Tylor,  F.  G.  S.,  all  concur  in  this  view, 
Mr.  Tylor  propounding  the  theory  of  a  Pluvial  Period  following 
the  Glacial  Period.  He  observes  that  the  Glacial  Period  must 
necessarily  have  been  followed  in  the  region  to  the  south  of  the 
glaciated  area,  by  a  period  of  prolonged  and  excessive  rainfall. 
Prof  Dana,  in  his  Manual  of  Geology,  describes  at  length  this 
great  flood  which  was  occasioned,  he  says,  by  the  melting  of  the 
glacier.  Dana,  however,  makes  this  flood  continue  through  the 
whole  of  his  Champlain  epoch,  which  he  believes  commenced 
immediately  at  the  close  of  the  Glacial  Period.  This  Palaeolithic 
Flood  was  in  all  probability  merely  a  repetition  of  one  or  more 
similar  deluges  which  had  occurred  in  the  Glacial  Period,  when„ 

*  Jour.  Anthrop.  Instit.,  January  1873,  p.  433. 


Man's  Age  in  the   World.  39 


as  we  know,  the  land  in  England,  Scotland,  and  Scandinavia, 
was  submerged  from  500  to  2,000  feet,  while  in  the  valley  of  the 
Danube  the  inundation  mud  is  found  at  a  height  of  1,300  feet. 
Le  Conte  likewise  takes  a  post-glacial  flood  for  granted,  and,  so 
far  as  I  know,  the  excavation  theory  as  held  in  England  is  not 
entertained  for  a  moment  by  the  geologists  of  other  countries. 
The  mass  of  gravel  which  we  see  may  have  been  brought  down 
by  the  glacial  floods,  and  been  afterwards  only  re-assorted  by 
the  post-glacial  flood.  * 

Such  a  flood  accounts  for  the  high  level  of  the  streams,  and  for 
the  deposition  of  the  gravel  and  the  river-silt ;  and  the  only 
question  with  which  we  are  concerned  is  the  date  of  its  occur- 
rence. The  Somme  River  doubtless  ran  at  this  time  150  feet 
above  its  present  level,  and  filled  its  valley  from  bluff"  to  bluff". 
The  James  River  at  Richmond  was  probably  five  or  six  miles 
wide.  You  know  that  now  in  the  course  of  a  few  days  the  Ohio 
rises  60  feet  at  Cincinnati.  The  Tennessee  River  at  Chattanooga 
rose  5iji(  feet  on  the  2nd  of  March,  1875.  M.  Reclus  mentions 
that  on  the  9th  of  October,  1837,  the  Ardeche,  a  small  affluent  of 
the  Rhone,  at  the  bridge  of  Gournier,  rose  70  feet  above  low- 
water  mark;  and  that  in  1S57  it  rose  60  feet. t  The  melting 
snows  and  the  extraordinary  rainfall  of  the  Paloeolithic  Period 
may  have  extended  over  several  centuries,  for  I  have  no   idea 

*  The  point  is  settled  by  the  high  level  beaches  of  the  Great  North  American 
Lakes.  On  Lake  Michigan  there  are  two  ancient  beaches,  showing  that  the 
water  formerly  stood  at  higher  levels.  Both  of  these  beaches  are  post-glacial. 
Now  it  is  just  as  reasonable  to  insist  that  the  basin  of  the  lake  has  been  gradually 
excavated  since  the  glacial  epoch  from  the  level  of  the  Upper  Beach  down  to  its 
present  bottom,  as  to  argue  that  the  valley  of  the  Somme  has  been  excavated  by 
the  river  during  the  same  period.  Similar  beaches  exist  on  the  other  lakes  of 
this  region,  showing  that,  like  the  rivers,  they  too  stood  at  a  much  higher  level 
during  the  prevalence  of  the  post-glacial  flood.     See  note  at  end. 

f  The  Earth,  p.  324. 


40  Opc7iing  of  the  Lewis  Brooks  Miiseiim. 


that  the  immense  amount  of  the  gravel  and  loess  which  we  see 
in  the  river-valleys  was  deposited  in  a  day.  * 

3.  The  Change  in  the  Physical  Geography. — The  next  diffi- 
culty to  be  met  is  the  great  change  in  the  physical  geography  of 
Europe  since  the  epoch  of  the  mammoth.  I  have  mentioned 
that  it  is  alleged  that  when  man  appeared  in  Western  Europe, 
the  bed  of  the  German  Ocean,  between  England  and  Holland, 
was  a  wooded  plain  over  which  the  mammoth  and  the  rhino- 
ceros roamed  with  the  other  palaeolithic  animals.  This  is  proba- 
bly (but  not  certainly)  true.  I  say  not  certainly,  because  there  is 
no  evidence  that  man  had  appeared  quite  so  early  as  this;  the. 
mammoth  we  know  had  done  so,  for  the  teeth  and  bones  of  this 
animal,  as  well  as  those  of  the  rhinoceros,  horse,  and  reindeer, 
are  dredged  up  in  vast  numbers  in  the  German  Ocean,  and  have 
been  likewise  obtained  from  the  English  Channel.  There  was  a 
sinking  of  this  land,  and  a  subsequent  partial  re-elevation,  about 
the  close  of  the  Palteolithic  Age — the  movement  having  proba- 
bly been  continued  since.  The  whole  movement  of  subsidence 
and  elevation  may  perhaps  have  amounted  to  400  or  500  feet. 

The  English  Channel  and  the  North  Sea  between  Holland  and 
England  are  quite  shallow.  An  elevation  of  the  sea  bottom  of 
150  feet  would,  according  to  Prof  Geikie,  drain  nearly  all  of  the 
German  Ocean  between  England  and  the  Continent. 

This  change  in  the  physical  geography  of  Europe,  it  is  urged, 
implies  a  vast  period  of  time,  and  Lyell  assumes  that  two  and  a 
half  feet  per  century  is  about  the  rate  at  which  these  elevations 
and  subsidences  progress.  A  movement  of  500  feet  at  this  rate 
would  require  20,000  years. 

These  movements  of  the  crust  of  the  earth  are  familiar  to 

*  There  is  another  fatal  objection  to  the  excavation  theory:  the  fauna  of  the 
high  gravel  beds  is  identical  with  that  (and  so  are  the  implements)  of  the  lower 
beds.  But  in  the  ages  which  must  have  elapsed,  according  to  the  theory,  there 
ought  to  have  been  a  change  in  both  fauna  and  climate. 


Mail's  Age  in  the  World.  41 


^geologists,  and  they  were  especially  characteristic  of  the  Glacial 
Period.  According  to  M.  Morlot  the  region  of  the  Alps  sank 
I, GOO  feet  during  this  epoch.  At  Moel  Tryfan  in  Wales  Lyell 
identified  fifty-seven  species  of  marine  shells  in  stratified  sand 
and  gravel  overlying  the  boulder  drift,  at  the  height  of  1,390 
feet.  As  is  to  be  expected,  such  movements  continued,  though 
with  less  intensity,  after  the  Glacial  Period,  and  are  in  progress 
at  the  present  day.  The  foundations  of  the  old  Roman  docks 
near  Falkirk  and  Edinburgh,  and  the  discovery  of  Roman  pot- 
tery and  marine  shells  on  a  raised  beach  near  the  latter  city, 
show  that  the  eastern  coast  of  Scotland  has  been  raised  25  feet 
since  the  Roman  galleys  sailed  into  the  Firth  of  Forth.  The 
shores  of  the  Bay  of  Matagorda,  on  the  coast  of  Texas,  have 
risen  from  11  to  22  inches  from  1845  to  1863.  Along  the  coasts 
of  New  Jersey  the  sea  has  encroached  within  sixty  years  upon 
the  sites  of  former  habitations,  and  entire  forests  have  been  pros- 
trated by  the  inundation. 

In  South  America  the  indications  of  the  elevation  of  the  land 
in  recent  times  are  very  remarkable.  Darwin  found  heaps  of 
modern  shells  on  the  Isle  of  Chiloe  at  the  height  of  347  feet. 
He  ascertained  that  at  Valparaiso,  during  the  17  years  between 
1817  and  1834,  the  ground  had  risen  10  feet  7  inches,  or  73^ 
inches  a  year.  In  front  of  Callao,  on  the  island  of  San  Lorenzo, 
at  a  height  of  85  feet,  he  discovered  in  a  bed  of  modern  shells, 
roots  of  sea-weed,  bones  of  birds,  ears  of  Indian  corn,  plaited 
reeds,  and  some  cotton-thread — relics  of  human  industry  almost 
exactly  resembling  those  found  in  the  graves  of  the  ancient 
Peruvians,  and  presumably  not  more  than  some  eight  or  ten 
centuries  old.  A  yet  more  striking  instance  is  mentioned  in  the 
article  on  "America"  in  the  latest  edition  of  the  Encyclopedia 
Brita^inica,  where  it  is  stated  that,  pottery  has  been  found  in  a 
marine  bed  on  the  coast  of  South  America  at  the  height  of  150 
feet. 


42  Ope7iing  of  the  Lewis  Brooks  Miise^im. 


Lyell  gives  a  very  interesting  account  of  a  buried  hut  dis- 
covered in  digging  a  canal,  in  1819,  near  Stockholm,  in  Sweden, 
at  the  depth  of  64  feet.  It  was  covered  by  marine  strata,  con- 
taining the  present  dwarfish  Baltic  shells.  He  represents  that  it 
is  impossible  to  explain  the  position  of  this  hut  without  sup- 
posing a  subsidence  to  the  depth  of  64  feet,  and  then  a  re-eleva- 
tion to  the  same  extent, — in  all  a  movement  of  128  feet.  Now 
near  this  hut  several  vessels  of  antique  form  were  also  found,  and 
an  iroji  anchor.  *  Iron  was  not  introduced  into  Sweden  before 
the  second  or  third  century  of  our  era,  and,  therefore,  all  of  this 
movement  of  128  feet  occurred  in  about  1,600  years.! 

On  the  west  coast  of  Sweden,  in  1862,  Mr.  Gwyn  Jeffreys 
found  recent  shells,  similar  to  those  now  living  in  the  adjacent 
seas,  at  a  height  of  200  feet  above  the  sea,  and  Lyell  remarks 
that  the  date  of  this  upheaval  by  no  means  reaches  back  to  the 
Glacial  Period.  | 

On  the  coast  of  Norway  the  elevation  is  yet  more  surprising  : 
marine  shells,  of  species  now  existing  a  few  degrees  further 
north,  have  been  observed  here  at  a  height  of  600  feet  above  the 
sea — showing  that  the  west  coast  of  Norway  has  been  raised 
600  feet  since  the  seas  of  this  region  acquired  their  present  tem- 
perature §—600  feet,  as  I  shall  show  presently,  since  the  Polished 
Stone  Age. 

These  facts  remove,  I  think,  any  difficulty  which  the  alleged 
changes  in  the  coast  lines  and  the  interior  lines  of  drainage  might 
suggest  as  to  the  lapse  of  time  since  the  palseolithic  flood. 

*  Principles  of  Geol.  II,  p.  187;  Archiv  fiir   Anthropologic,  August  1875,?. 

17- 

-{- 1  am  not  ignorant  that  a  recent  attempt  has   been  made  to  explain  this  by  a 

land-slide. 

\  Principles,  II,  192. 

\  Ibid,  vol.  I,  chap,  vii  ;  vol.  II,  chap,  xxxi  ;  Antiq.  of  Man,  4th  edit.,  pp.  63, 
64.' 


Man's  Age  m  the  World.  43- 


4.  The  Extinct  Animals. — I  remarked  at  the  outset  that  if  we 
could  fix  the  place  of  the  mammoth  in  time,  we  could  fix  the 
epoch  of  man's  appearance.  It  is  not  astonishing  that  the  appre- 
hension of  the  fact  that  man  lived  in  England  with  the  Hippo- 
potamus and  the  Elephant,  and  that  the  British  Lion  was  a 
veritable  reality  to  the  prehistoric  Briton,  should  excite  a  feeling 
of  a  vague  antiquity — an  order  of  things  entirely  beyond  the 
pale  of  such  a  chronology  as  our  fathers  were  instructed  in. 
Think  of  the  remains  of  the  reindeer  being  found  within  a  few 
miles  of  London,  and  even  as  far  south  as  the  Pyrenees!  and  of 
the  musk  ox,  now  confined  to  the  Arctic  circle,  ranging  in  the 
valley  of  the  Dordogne  within  the  human  period,  and  that  in 
association  with  such  representatives  of  a  warmer  climate  as  the 
spotted  hytena  of  Southern  Africa  and  the  lion  and  hippopota- 
mus !  I  do  not  wonder  that  the  sober  judgment  of  men  like 
Lyell  and  Lubbock  was  unsettled,  and  that  the  whole  world,  as 
it  were,  has  quietly  acquiesced  in  the  declaration  that,  while  the 
exact  Umits  cannot  be  fixed,  the  sojourn  of  man  upon  earth  must 
have  been  long. 

A  moment's  reflection  ought,  however,  to  raise  the  enquiry, 
Why  should  Europe  constitute  a  continent  apart  by  itself  in  the 
absence  of  the  great  pachyderms  and  the  great  carnivorous  ani- 
mals, which  are  found,  in  whole  or  in  part,  in  Asia,  Africa,  and 
America?  Why  should  the  lion,  the  hyaana,  the  tiger,  the  rhi- 
noceros, the  elephant,  not  have  crossed  into  Europe  from  Africa 
and  Asia?  In  the  early  stage  of  the  human  period,  it  is  agreed 
on  all  hands,  these  animals  were  found  in  Europe,  and  the  im- 
pression that  such  a  time  is  necessarily  extremely  remote,  is 
simply  an  error,  as  I  shall  now  proceed  to  show. 

In  the  United  States  we  are  not  unfamiliar  with  the  extinction 
of  wild  animals  that  were  common  a  few  centuries  ago.  At  the 
close  of  the  last  century  the  bison  and   the  elk  were  found  in  the- 


44  Opening  of  the  Lewis  Brooks  Mtcsenvi. 


Kanawha  Valley,  and  the  bison  and  the  great  moose-deer  were 
both  common  in  the  valley  of  the  Connecticut  two  centuries  ago. 
It  has  been  the  same  in  India.  Three  centuries  ago,  as  we  learn 
from  the  public  memoirs  of  the  Mogul  Emperor  Baber,  the 
rhinoceros,  the  wild  buffalo,  and  the  lion  were  found  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Benares,  and  the  elephant  abounded  in  the 
jungles  around  Chunar.  The  elephant  has  not  been  known  in 
this  region  for  a  hundred  years,  but  has  been  confined  to  the 
forests  of  the  Himala  and  the  ghats  of  Malabar ;  while  the  rhino- 
ceros is  extirpated  with  not  even  a  tradition  of  its  former  exist- 
ence. The  lion  was  common  in  the  desert  region  northwest  of 
Delhi  in  the  memory  of  very  old  men  now  living,  but  "  hardly  a 
tradition,"  we  are  also  told,  remains  to-day  of  this  formidable 
animal."  * 

The  Moa  {Dinornis  giganteus)  of  New  Zealand  has  become 
very  recently  extinct,  as  has  the  ^piornis  of  Madagascar,  whose 
&gg  had  a  capacity  of  two  gallons.  These  gigantic  birds  were 
twelve  feet  high. 

The  extinct  fauna  of  the  palasolithic  period  embraced  the  Urus 
(or  Bos  pri^nigeniiis),  the  Aurochs  (or  European  Bison,  identical 
with  the  American  bison),  the  Reindeer,  the  Great  Irish  Elk,  the 
Cave-bear,  Cave-lion,  Cave-hytena,  Mammoth,  Rhinoceros  ticho- 
rinus.  Hippopotamus  major,  &c.  While  it  is  universally  con- 
ceded that  man  lived  in  Southern  France  with  the  reindeer, 
some  doubt  has  been  expressed  as  to  the  contemporaneity  of 
man  and  the  mammoth.  But  I  shall  not  raise  this  question,  and 
conceding  the  co-existence  of  all  the  animals  named  with  man,  I 
shall  proceed  now  to  show  that  most  of  them  survived  to  the 
Historic  Period,  and  all  of  them  to  a  period  not  far  removed  from 
that. 

The  Urus  and  the  Aurochs  are  both  mentioned  in  the  Niebe- 

*  Figuier's  Mammalia,  pp.  143,  148,  150. 


Man's  Age  in  the  World.  45 


lungen  Lied,  and  the  traveller  Bell  mentions  the  former  as  exist- 
ing in  Poland  in  the  17th  century,  while  the  Emperor  of  Russia 
still  preserves  the  Aurochs  in  the  imperial  forests  of  Lithuania. 
So  much  for  two  of  the  so-called  extinct  animals. 

Great  astonishment  was  excited  when  the  bones  of  the  Rein- 
deer were  found  in  the  caves  of  the  South  of  France,  and  great 
emphasis  has  been  laid  on  this,  in  connection  with  the  alleged 
change  of  climate,  to  show  the  great  lapse  of  time  which  must 
have  occurred  since  this  denizen  of  the  snowy  North  constituted 
the  main  support  of  man,  where  the  consumptive  now  seeks 
those  soft  and  delicate  breezes  which  rustle  amid  the  vines  and 
almond-trees  of  Gascogny  and  Beam.  It  had  been  overlooked 
that  it  had  been  recorded  in  the  Orkneyinga  Saga  that  the  Nor- 
wegian jarls  of  the  1 2th  century  used  to  cross  the  seas  from  the 
Orkneys  to  hunt  the  reindeer  in  Scotland ;  and  within  a  i^w  years 
past  the  bones  of  this  animal  have  been  found  near  London,  in 
the  Walthamstow  marshes,  associated  with  spear-heads  and 
knives  of  bronze.  His  remains  have  been,  found  also  in  the 
ruined  towers  of  Scotland,  called  "burghs"  or  "brochs,"  asso- 
ciated with  those  of  the  horse,  ox,  and  sheep.  They  are  found 
also  in  the  Scotch  peat,  as  well  as  in  that  of  England*  and  Den- 
mark, which  belongs  chronologically  to  the  Polished  Stone  Age. 
And,  lastly,  I  may  add  that  it  is  now  pretty  well  given  up  that 
both  Caesar  and  Sallustf  refer  to  the  reindeer  as  existing  in  their 
time  in  the  Hercynian  Forest.  These  facts  setde  this  point  con- 
clusively so  far  as  the  reindeer  is  concerned.  But  you  will  ob- 
serve that  if  we  thus  bring  the  reindeer  down  to  recent  times, 
we  create  the  strongest  presumption,  without  going  further,  that 
his  contemporary  in  palaeolithic  times,  the  mammoth,  cannot  be 

*Brit.  Quar.  Review,  April  1874,  p.  346. 

f  De  Bel.  Gal.  VI,  26;  Fragm.  incertK  sedis,  18  Dietsch.;  Excav.  at  the  Kess- 
lerloch,  Alerk,  trans.,  p.  11.  Mr.  Boyd  Dawkins  admits  that  the  reindeer  lived 
in  Germany  in  the  time  of  Caesar.     Cave-Hunting,  p.  79. 


46  Opening  of  the  Lewis  Brooks  Museicm. 


very  far  behind;  we  dispel  the  iUusion  that  the  era  of  these  ex- 
tinct animals  in  Europe  is  very  remote. 

The  Great  Irish  Elk  {Mcgaceros  hibernicits)  was  one  of  the 
most  superb  animals  among  the  gigantic  fauna  of  this  period. 
Its  height  was  ten  to  eleven  feet,  and  the  breadth  between  the 
anders  ten  to  twelve  feet.  It  has  been  represented  by  some  to 
have  been  more  ancient  than  the  mammoth,  but  its  remains  also 
occur  in  the  Irish  and  French  peat,  sometimes  in  associadon  with 
objects  of  iron  and  bronze,  and  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  it 
is  referred  to  in  the  "Book  of  Lismore"  as  hunted  by  the  ancient 
Irish  since  the  Christian  era.  It  is  indeed  the  opinion  of  Prof 
Brandt  that  it  survived  in  the  marshes  of  Europe  as  late  as  the 
14th  century.* 

The  remains  of  the  Cave-bear  have  been  found  in  Neolithic 
caves  in  Italy,  and  M.  Gervais  now  identifies  it  with  the  present 
brown  bear  of  Europe.  It  attained  a  much  greater  size  in  ancient 
times,  and  this  misled  the  palseontologists  to  refer  it  to  a  distinct 
species.  The  greater  size  of  the  ancient  animals — the  wild  boars 
and  the  stags  as  well  as  the  carnivores — is  now  a  recognized  fact, 
and  is  observable  in  the  Neolithic  as  well  as  the  Palseolithic 
period. 

The  Cave  lion  is  now  admitted  to  be  idendcal  in  species  with 
the  Asiadc  lion,  and  the  Cave-hyaena  is  idendfied  as  the  same 
with  the  spotted  hyaena  of  Africa,  f  The  lion,  we  know,  existed 
in  Thessaly  in  the  dme  of  Herodotus  and  Aristotie,  and  indeed 
as  late  as  the  beginning  of  our  era. 

All    these   animals,    hasdly    assumed    by    naturalists    to    have 

*For  evidence  on  this  point,  see  Dublin  (^uar.  Jour.  Sci.,  January  1865  ;  Ibid, 
1S64,  p.  154;  Wilson's  Prehist.  Man,  2nd  edit.,  p.  37;  Materiaux,  1S72;  p. 
534;  Smithson.  Rep.  for  1865,  p.  400.  In  one  instance  a  leg  of  this  animal  was 
found  in  a  bog  in  Ireland  with  a  portion  of  the  tendons,  skin,  and  hair  on  it. 

f  Prof.  Dawkins  in  Pop.  Sci.  Review,  1869,  p.  153;    Prehist.  Times,  p.  285. 


Ma7i's  Age  in  the  World.  47 


been  long  extinct,  were  the  contemporaries  of  the  mammoth  and 
the  rhinoceros  in  Central  and  Western  Europe ;  as  we  have  re- 
marked, the  fact  that  they  have  existed  in  historic  times  creates 
the  strongest  probability  for  the  recent  existence  of  the  great 
pachyderms,  for  which,  however,  the  direct  evidence,  as  I  pro- 
■ceed  to  show,  is  very  strong. 

In  the  Book  of  Job  some  great  pachyderm — either  the  ele- 
phant or  the  hippopotamus — is  described  as  an  object  familiar  to 
the  readers  of  that  primeval  drama.  The  crocodile  is  also  de- 
scribed. Now  the  crocodile  has  been  ascertained  within  recent 
years  to  be  still  living  in  one  of  the  rivers  running  through  the 
ancient  Samaria  into  the  Mediterranean ;  and  the  leviathan  and 
the  behemoth  of  the  sacred  book  were  no  doubt  both  well 
known  in  Palestine  when  they  were  selected  for  the  purposes  of 
illustration  by  this  ancient  writer.  You  will  remember  that, 
speaking  of  behemoth,  he  says,  "  he  trusteth  that  he  can  draw 
up  yordan  in  his  mouth:"  why  "Jordan,"  if  the  animal  was  not 
found  on  the  banks  of  that  river? 

Among  the  pottery  found  in  the  relic-beds  at  Troy  by  Dr. 
Schliemann  there  were  various  specimens  moulded  into  the 
form  of  some  animal,  and  some  light  is  thrown  on  the  allusion  to 
behemoth  in  the  book  of  Job  by  the  fact  that  one  of  these  ves- 
sels of  pottery  represented  the  hippopotamus.  This  was  found 
in  the  bed  above  that  referred  to  the  Homeric  Trojans,  and  as 
there  is  no  trace  of  Egyptian  influence  at  Troy,  the  discovery 
seems  to  show  that  the  hippopotamus  lived  on  the  shores  of  the 
Hellespont  about  1200  B.  C.  The  bones  of  the  same  animal 
have  been  found  in  the  bed  of  the  river  Chelif  in  Algeria,  and 
although  now  confined  to  Central  and  Southern  Africa,  it  is  well 
known  that  in  ancient  (and  even  recent)  times  they  frequented 
the  mouth  of  the  Nile. 

* 

So  among  the  specimens  of  pottery  at  Mycenae  there  was  one 


48  Opening  of  the  Lewis  Brooks  Museum. 


containing  a  delineation  of  the  elephant,  which  implies  the  exist-^ 
ence  of  this  animal,  about  the  time  of  the  Trojan  war,  somewhere 
in  the  Mediterranean  basin. 

The  hippopotamus  is  found  nowhere  in  Asia  at  present,  and 
(except  in  Siberia)  has  never  existed  there  during  the  present 
geological  period  (the  human  epoch),  as  is  generally  believed  ; 
and  Dr.  Falconer,  in  his  Palaeontological  Memoirs,  mentions  it 
as  a  curious  fact  that  he  was  informed  by  the  eminent  Indian 
scholar  and  author  of  the  Sanskrit  Encyclopedia,  Raja  Radha- 
kanta  Derva,  that  the  hippopotamus  of  India  is  referred  to  under 
different  names  of  great  antiquity,  significant  of  "Water-Ele- 
phant," and  "  Living  in  the  Water."*  The  fact,  however,  is  not 
at  all  curious  when  our  attention  is  called  to  the  other  fact  that 
Alexander  the  Great  refers  to  the  animal  as  inhabiting  the  banks 
of  the  Indus  in  his  letter  to  Aristotle,  and  that  the  naturalist  of 
that  expedition,  Onesicritus,  makes  the  same  statement,  f 

The  most  extensive  and  remarkable  of  the  palaeolithic  stations 
in  Europe  is  that  of  Solutre,  near  Macon,  in  Eastern  France. 
This  was  a  sort  of  capital  of  the  Cave-men — a  tribal  village — 
where  are  found  the  bones  of  100,000  horses,  and  innumerable 
bones  of  the  reindeer,  with  the  bones  of  the  mammoth,  hyaena, 
and  other  palaeolithic  animals.  The  graves  of  "the  artisans  of 
the  drift"  are  also  found  here — the  extended  skeletons  of  these 
early  Mongoloid  wanderers  reposing  at  full  length  on  the  slabs 
which  probably  constituted  originally  the  hearthstones  of  their 
cabins.  X     I   mention  this  station  merely  to  call  attention  to  the 

*  Ibid,  vol.  II,  p.  573-So. 

f  See  Buffon's  Nat.  Hist.,  VII,  453,  London,  1812. 

J  Mr.  Boyd  Dawkins  is  very  loath  to  admit  that  pahuolithic  man  practised 
burial,  and  is  by  no  means  candid  in  treating  of  Solutre.  He  tries  to  prove  that 
the  graves  are  Merovingian,  although  the  whole  body  of  French  Archceologists, 
including  M.  de  Mortillet,  M.  Cartailhac,  Dr.  Broca,  M.  Arcelin,  etc.,  admit 
their  palaeolithic  date.     In    1873  the  French  Association  in  session  at  Lyons. 


Man's  Age  in  the  World.  49 


fact  that  the  horns  of  the  reindeer  here  are  so  well  preserved  that 
when  placed  under  the  saw  they  emit  distinctly  the  odour  of 
fresh  bone. 

You  are  aware  that  in  Siberia  the  fossil  ivory  is  so  little  decayed 
that  it  is  the  subject  of  a  considerable  commerce,  and  is  regarded 
as  hardly  inferior  to  the  Indian  ivory.  But  the  fresh  condition 
of  the  bones  and  tusks  of  the  mammoth  in  Eastern  Russia  and 
diroucrhout  Siberia  north  of  s6°  north  latitude  ceases  to  astonish 
us,  when  we  encounter,  as  has  been  done  in  a  number  of 
instances,  the  almost  perfectly  preserved  carcasses  of  the  mam- 
moth and  rhinoceros  in  the  frozen  mud  of  the  banks  of  the 
great  rivers,  with  the  flesh  in  such  a  condition  that  it  is  greedily 
devoured  by  the  dogs  and  wolves.  It  is  simply  incredible  that 
any  geological  antiquity  can  belong  to  this  flesh  and  bones — 
there  is  no  such  example  in  palaeontology. 

The  preservation  of  the  carcass  of  the  mammoth  in  Siberia,  as 
Lyell  has  remarked,  shows  that  the  catastrophe  which  overtook 
him  was  consummated  suddenly.  The  animal  was  caught  imme- 
diately after  death  in  the  embraces  of  the  frost  before  it  had  time 
to  decompose — and  the  rigour  of  the  climate  has  never  abated 
since.  Prior  to  this  sudden  refrigeration  the  climate  of  Siberia, 
as  proved  by  the  remains  of  vegetation  and  the  absence  of  the 
reindeer  during  the  sojourn  of  the  mammoth,  with  the  presence 
of  the  tiger  and  the  spotted  hyaena,  was  comparatively  mild. 
The  change  in  the  climate  corresponded  probably  with  the  close 
of  the  palaeolithic  age  in  Western  Europe,  and  was  due  to  the 
draining  of  the  great  Asiatic  Mediterranean,  of  which  the  Cas- 
pian, the  Aral,  and  the  Black  seas  are  the  residua,  and  to  the 
elevation  of  the  land. 

visited  Solutre,  and  it  was  unanimously  agreed  that  the  burials  belong  to  that 
age.     Materiaux,  7th,  8th,  and  9th  livraisons,  1873. 

It  is  especially  worthy  of  note  that  the  horse  at   Solutre  seems  to  have  been 
domesticated. 


50  Opening  of  the  Lezuis  Brooks  Mnseiim. 


In  America  the  mammoth  and  the  mastodon  roamed  over  the 
continent  together,  and  the  indications  of  their  recent  presence 
here — especially  the  mastodon — are  such  as  to  admit  of  no  con- 
troversy— I  say,  of  no  controversy.  Their  remains  are  found  all 
over  the  United  States,  and  in  Mexico,  in  the  most  recent  and  su- 
perficial deposits,  the  bones  sometimes  protruding  above  the  sur- 
face of  the  shallow  peat  beds  in  which  they  were  mired.  "  There 
can  now  be  no  doubt,"  says  Prof  Shaler  (who  does  not  believe  in 
the  recent  apparition  of  man)  "  that  a  few  thousand  years  ago 
these  companion  giants  roamed  through  the  forests  and  along  the 
streams  of  the  Mississippi  Valley."  *  *  "  Almost  any  swampy 
bit  of  ground,"  he  adds,  "  in  Ohio  or  Kentucky,  contains  traces 
of  the  mammoth  and  mastodon."  *  In  several  instances  the  un- 
decayed  remains  of  their  last  meal  have  been  found  in  the  stomach, 
and  the  bones  of  the  mastodon,  Dr.  Foster  remarks,  have  been 
recovered  with  so  much  of  the  gelatinous  matter  yet  remaining 
in  them,  that  "a  nourishing  soup  might  be  extracted." f 

I  will  only  add  that  among  the  animal  mounds  of  Wisconsin, 
there  is  one  near  Racine,  in  Grant  county,  which  is  said  to  be  a 
representation  of  an  elephant,  and  goes  under  the  name  of  "  The 
Big  Elephant  Mound."  \  A  similar  mound  near  the  town  of 
Muscoda,  in  the  same  state,  and  which  was  traditionally  called 
the  "  Mastodon  Mound,"  is  figured  in  a  book  on  the  Antiquities 
of  America,  published  in  1858  by  William  Pidgeon,  whose  origi- 
nal home  was  in  Frederick  county  in  this  State,  and  who  ex- 
amined the  mounds  of  the  Upper  Mississippi  Valley  in  1840. 

These  facts — and  I  refer  especially  to  the  preservation  of  the 
carcasses  of  the  mammoth  and  rhinoceros  in  Siberia,  and  to  the 
occurrence  of  the  remains  of  the  mastodon  and  mammoth  in 

*  American  Naturalist,  Vol.  V,  606,  607. 

j- Prehist.  Races  of  U.  S.,  p.  370. 

\  There  is  a  cut  of  this  mound  in  the  Smithsonian  Report  for  1872,  p.  416. 


Man's  Ao-e  in  the  World.  51 


'<!> 


America  ordinarily  in  the  most  superficial  deposits — constitute 
positive  testimony  for  the  recent  existence  of  these  great  animals, 
and  remove  perhaps  the  most  impressive  circumstance  which 
seems  to  point  to  a  remote  antiquity  for  our  race. 

I  have  mentioned  the  evidence  going  to  show  the  existence  of 
the  hippopotamus  in  the  Troad  in  the  12th  century  B.  C,  and 
the  delineation  of  the  elephant  at  Mycenae.  It  has  been 
strangely  overlooked  in  this  connection  that  the  "Voyage  of 
Hanno,"  which  refers  to  an  expedition  fitted  out  by  the  Cartha- 
genian  government  about  500  B.  C,  speaks  of  "herds  of  ele- 
phants" as  seen  by  this  expedition  on  the  northwest  coast  of 
Africa,  and  that  Herodotus,  Strabo,  and  Pliny  all  attest  the  exist- 
ence of  this  animal  in  Mauretania— just  across  from  Spain — be- 
fore and  at  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era.  *  Remains  of  the 
African  elephant  have  also  been  found  in  Spain,  and  in  the  Neo- 
lithic caves  of  Gibraltar  Capt.  Brome  found  the  bones  of  the  Af- 
rican lion,  lynx,  serval,  leopard,  and  spotted  hyaena. 

From  those  eloquent  records  of  the  distant  past,  the  slabs  and 
obelisks  of  Assyria  and  Egypt,  a  startling  testimony  comes  to  us 
on  this  subject.  From  a  representation  on  an  Egyptian  tomb  at 
Oournah,  of  the  time  of  Thothmes  III,  t  and  from  the  stele  of 
Amenemheb,  a  military  officer  of  the  same  reign,  we  learn  that 
the  elephant  was  among  the  tribute  brought  to  the  Egyptian  mon- 
arch from  Assyria  about  the  period  1500  B.  C.;t  while  from  an 
inscription  on  the  prism  of  Tiglath-pileser  I,  in  the  British  Mu- 
seum, we  learn  that  that  great  Assyrian  prince  hunted  the  wild 
elephant  in  the  valley  of  the  Tigris  about  1 1 20  B.  C.  §     You  see 

*  See  Lenormant's  Ancient  History  of  the  East,  trans.,  vol.  II,  p.  263.     Also 
Herod.,  Book  IV,  \  191  ;  Pliny,  Nat.  Hist.,  Book  VIII,  chap.  11,  Strabo,  Book 

XVII,  chap.  3,  \\  4,  5.  7,  8- 

f  Birch's  Egypt,  p.  99;  Smith's  Ancient  Hist,  of  East,  p.  290. 

JComptes  Rendus  del'  Academic  des   Inscriptions   et    Belles   Lettres,  1873, 
pp.  157,  165,  178. 

\  Work  last  cited,  p.  182, 


52  Opening  of  the  Lewis  Brooks  Mnsejwi. 


the  pertinence  of  this:  if  the  African  elephant  ranged  along  the 
Straits  of  Gibraltar  at  the  beginning  of  our  era,  and  the  Asiatic 
elephant  was  found  not  far  from  the  Hellespont  in  the  12th  cen- 
tury before  Christ,  is  it  improbable  that  a  hardier  species — the 
mammoth  of  the  North — found  its  way  into  Europe  at  a  date 
comparatively  recent? 

I  have  thus  hurriedly  passed  in  review  the  points  usually  relied 
on  to  prove  the  antiquity  of  man ;  the  fact  that  the  records  of  the 
most  ancient  nations,  the  Babylonians,  the  Egyptians,  the  Per- 
sians, the  Chinese,  the  Hindoos,  the  Phoenicians,  do  not  go  back 
further  than  a  few  thousand  years  before  our  era,  and  the  limited 
chronology  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  create  the  presumption 
that  man  is  recent,  and  the  burden  of  proof  is  with  those  who 
come  forward  to  overthrow  the  belief  established  on  these  foun- 
dations. Those  who  defend  the  short  chronology  have  only  to 
show  that  the  facts  of  Archaeology  and  Geology  are  not  incon- 
sistent with  the  lower  figures. 

There  is  only  one  more  point  that  I  wish  to  touch ;  and  this 
presents  direct  and  positive  proof  from  physical  science  for  the 
recent  appearance  of  man  in  Europe.  The  point  to  which  I  wish 
to  call  your  attention  is  the  recent  date  of  the  Glacial  Period.  I 
have  not  time  to  refer  to  the  interesting  observations  of  Prof. 
Edmund  Andrews  on  the  beaches  of  the  Great  North  American 
Lakes,  nor  to  those  of  Prof  N.  H.  Winchell  on  the  Falls  of  St. 
Anthony,  going  to  establish  this  fact :  I  desire  to  present  a  much 
simpler  and  much  more  concise  argument — one  which  all  can 
readily  understand,  and  which  seems  to  me  to  be  conclusive  on  this 
subject.  If  we  can  fix  the  date  of  the  Glacial  Epoch,  we  can  fix 
the  antiquity  of  man's  life  in  the  world.  Lyell  contended  as  late 
as  the  tenth  edition  of  his  "Principles"  that  this  great  geological 
episode  occurred  800,000  years  ago ;    in  the  eleventh  edition  pub- 


Man's  Age  in  the  World.  53 


lished  in  1872  he  substituted  200,000.     I  am  convinced  that  in  a 
very  few  years  geologists  will  bring  it  down  as  low  as  10,000. 

The  remains  of  Palaeolithic  Man — the  contemporary  of  the 
mammoth — have  never  been  found  north  of  latitude  54°  in  Eng- 
land, nor  in  Ireland,  Scotland,  Denmark,  Norway,  or  Sweden. 
In  these  countries  the  earliest  traces  of  man  belong  to  the  Neo- 
lithic or  Polished  Stone  Age,  nor,  excepting  a  few  cases  in  Scot- 
land, and  one  or  two  in  Ireland,  have  the  remains  of  the  mam- 
moth been  found  in  these  countries.  The  reason  for  this  is  given 
by  Lyell ;  *  he  refers  it  to  the  fact  that  when  palaeolithic  man  was 
living  in  the  Somme  Valley  and  the  South  of  England,  Scotland 
and  Scandinavia  were  still  covered  by  the  ice-sheet — the  Glacial 
Epoch  still  continued  in  those  regions.  So  in  the  Archiv  fur 
Anthropologie,\  we  read;  "Neither  in  Scandinavia  nor  in  North 
Germany  have  we  yet  discovered  the  slightest  trace  of  palaeo- 
lithic man."  "  Scandinavia  and  North  Germany  were  then 
covered  by  the  ice." 

When  the  ice  retired,  man  advanced;  but  observe,  he  carried 
with  him  into  Denmark  and  Scotland  his  polished  stone  imple- 
ments— it  was  the  Polished  Stone  Age  when  this  advance  took 
place.  The  ice-sheet,  therefore,  retired  from  Denmark  and  the 
North  of  England  (perhaps  North  Germany)  in  the  Polished 
Stone  Age.  If  we  can  fix  the  date  of  the  Polished  Stone  Age, 
we  can  fix  the  time  when  the  Glacial  Age  terminated  in  these 
countries.  Now  Archaeologists  have  approximately  fixed  the  date 
of  the  Neolithic  Age  at  from  3000  to  7000  years  ago.  In  Den- 
mark Prof  Worsaae  places  it  at  about  1000  B.  C.  It  is  the  date 
of  the  older  Lake-Dwellings,  of  the  older  Shell-Mounds,  and  of 
the  Peat.  My  own  opinion  is  that  it  was  a  great  deal  nearer 
3000  years  ago  than  7000.     I  do  not  believe  that  it  was  earlier 

*  Principles  of  Geol.,  II,  360  ;    Antiq.  man,  4th  edit.,  p.  295. 
■{■August,  1875,  Correspondenz-Blatt,  s.  18. 


54  Opcnhig  of  the  Lewis  Brooks  Museum. 


than  2000  B.  C.  We  have  thus  (approximately)  the  date  of  the 
Glacial  Epoch  fixed  by  Archaeology — a  brilliant  achievement  for 
this  youngest  of  the  sciences.  And  with  the  ascertainment  of 
the  date  of  the  Glacial  Age,  we  bring  the  great  cycle  of  geological 
time,  ere  it  springs  backward  into  the  Past,  within  the  well-de- 
fined limits  of  Chronology,  and  fasten  immovably  the  first  link  in 
human  history  to  the  striated  rocks  and  ice-pressed  clays  of 
Scandinavia  and  Scotland. 


Note  on  Evolution. 


Beginning  in  the  Lower  Silurian  the  sub-class  of  bivalve  shells  known  as 
Brachiopods  (Lampshells)  has  continued  to  the  present  day.  Of  all  the  genera 
of  animals  now  having  living  species  only  four  or  five,  such  as  Lingula  and 
Discina,  commenced  their  existence  in  the  Lower  Silurian.  These  have  sur- 
vived through  all  the  geologic  ages,  and  with  the  exception  of  Dr.  Dawson's 
Eozoon  Canadense  are  among  the  earliest  forms  of  life  now  known.  They 
belong  to  the  venerable  and  persistent  tribe  of  Brachiopods.  It  occurred  to 
Mr.  Darwin  that  the  history  of  these  Brachiopods  might  throw  some  light 
on  the  theory  of  Evolution.  Mr.  Davidson,  of  Brighton,  the  friend  of  Mr. 
Darwin,  has  made  the  Brachiopods  the  subject  of  his  life-study.  In  1865 
he  received  the  Wollaston  medal  from  the  Geological  Society,  in  186S 
the  silver  medal,  in  1870  the  gold  medal  of  the  Royal  Society;  and  the 
title  page  of  his  later  treatises  is  covered  with  the  titles  bestowed  upon 
him  by  British  and  foreign  societies.  Mr.  Darwin  accordingly  addressed 
a  letter  to  Mr.  Davidson  remarking  that  "  several  really  good  judges  had 
remarked  to  him  how  desirable  it  would  be  to  exemplify  and  work  out  in 
detail  with  a  single  group  of  beings,  the  gradual  changes  which  took  place 
through  the  geological  formations,"  requesting  Mr.  Davidson  to  make  these 
observations  with  regard  to  the  Brachiopods.  After  some  hesitation  Mr.  David- 
son complied  with  this  request.  In  a  lecture  before  the  Brighton  Natural 
History  Society,  published  in  the  Geological  Magazine  for  April,  May,  and 
June,  1877,  he  gave  the  result  of  his  investigations.  The  judgment  was 
adverse  to  the  theory.     I  make  the  following  extract : 

"  Darwin's  tempting  and  beautiful  theory  of  descent  with  modification  bears 
a  charm  that  appears  to  be  almost  irresistible,  and  I  would  be  the  last  person  to 
assert  that  it  may  not  represent  the  actual  mode  of  specific  development.  It  is 
a  far  more  exalted  conception  than  the  idea  of  constant  independent  creations ; 
but  we  are  stopped  by  a  number  of  questions  that  seem  to  plunge  the  conception 
in  a  maze  of  inexplicable,  nay,  mysterious  difficulties ;  nor  has  Darwin,  as  far 


56  Opening  of  the  Lewis  Brooks  Museum. 


as  I  am  aware,  said  how  he  supposes  the  first  primordial  form  to  have  been  in- 
troduced. The  theory  is  at  best,  as  far  as  we  can  at  present  perceive,  with  our 
imperfect  state  of  knowledge,  but  half  the  truth,  being  well  enough  in  many 
cases  a~  between  species  and  species ;  for  it  is  evident  that  many  so-termed 
species  may  be  nothing  more  than  modifications  produced  by  descent.  It  ap- 
plies, hkewise,  to  accidental  variations  as  between  closely  allied  genera,  yet 
there  is  much  more  than  this,  with  respect  to  which  the  theory  seems  insuffi- 
cient. The  strange  geological  persistency  of  certain  types,  such  as  Lingula, 
Discina,  Nautilus,  etc.,  seems  also  to  bar  the  at  present  thorough  acceptance  of 
such  a  theory  of  general  descent  with  modification. 

"  We  have  no  positive  evidence  of  those  modifications  which  the  theory  in- 
volves, for  types  appear  on  the  whole  to  be  permanent  as  long  as  they  continue, 
and  when  a  genus  disappears  there  is  no  modification,  that  I  can  see,  of  any  of 
the  forms   that  continue  beyond,  as  far  as  the    Brachiopoda  appear  to   be  con- 
cerned, and  why  should  a  number  of  genera,  such  as  Lingula,  Discina,  Crania, 
and  Rhynchonella,  have  continued  to  be  represented  with  the  same  characters 
and  often  with   but  small   modification  in  shape  during  the  entire  sequence  of 
geological  strata  ?     Why  did  they  not  offer  modifications,  or  alter  during  those 
incalculable  ages  ?     Limiting  myself  to  the  Brachiopoda,  let  us  see  what  further 
they  will  tell  us  upon  this  question.     Taking  the  present  state  of  our  knowledge 
as  a  guide,  but  admitting  at  the  same  time  that  any  day  our  conclusions  and  in- 
ductions may  require  to  be  modified  by  fresh  discoveries,  let  us  ascertain  whether 
they  reveal  anything  to  support  Darwinian  ideas.     We  find  that  the  larger  num- 
ber  of  genera  made  their  first  appearance  during  the   Palaeozoic  periods,  and 
since  they  have  been  decreasing  in  number  to  the  present  period.    We  will  leave 
out  of  question  the  species,  for  they  vary  so  little  that  it  is  often  very  difficult  to 
trace   really  good  distinctive  characters   bet\\een  them ;   it  is  different  with  the 
genera,  as  they  are,  or  should  be,  founded  on  much  greater  and  more  permanent 
distinctions.     Thus,  for  example,  the  family   Spiriferidcc  includes  genera  which 
are  all  characterized  by  a  calcified  spiral  lamina  for  the  support   of  the   brachial 
appendages ;   and  however  varied  these  may  be,  they  always  retain  the  distinct- 
ive characters  of  the  group  from   their  first  appearance  to  their  extinction.     The 
Brachiopodist  labours  under  the  difticulties  of  not   being  able  to  determine  what 
are  the  simplest,  or  which  are  the  highest  families  into  which  either  of  the  two 
great  groups  of  his  favourite  class  is  divided ;  so  far  then  he  is  unable  to  point 
out  any  evidence  favouring  progressive  development  in  it.     But,  confining  himself 
to  species,  he  sees  often  before  him  great  varietal  changes,  so  much  so  as  to  make 
it  difficult  for  him  to  define  the  species;   and  it  leads  him  to  the  belief  that  such 
groups  were  not  of  independent  origin,  as  was  universally  thought  before  Dar- 
win published  his  great  work  on  the  '  Origin  of  Species.'     But  in  this  respect 
the  Brachiopoda  reveal  nothing   more  than  other  groups  of  the  organic  king- 
doms. 

"  Now    although  certain  genera,  such  as  Terebratula,  Rhynchonella,  Crania, 
and  Discina,  have  enjoyed  a  very  considerable  geological  existence,  there  are 


Man's  Age  in  the  World.  57 


genera,  such  as  Stringocephalus,  Uncites,  Porambonites,  Koninckina,  and  sev- 
eral others,  which  made  their  appearance  very  suddenly  and  without  any  warn- 
ing ;  after  a  while  they  disappeared  in  a  similar  abrupt  manner,  having  enjoyed 
a  comparatively  short  existence.  They  are  all  possessed  of  such  marked  and 
distinctive  internal  characters  that  we  cannot  trace  between  them  and  associated 
or  synchronous  genera  any  evidence  of  their  being  either  modifications  of  one 
or  the  other,  or  of  being  the  result  of  descent  with  modification.  Therefore, 
although  far  from  denying  the  possibility  or  probability  of  the  correctness  of  the 
Darwinian  theory,  I  could  not  conscientiously  affirm  that  the  Brachiopoda,  as  far 
as  I  am  at  present  acquainted  with  them,  would  be  of  much  service  in  proving 
it.  The  subject  is  worthy  of  the  continued  and  serious  attention  of  every  well- 
informed  man  of  science.  The  sublime  Creator  of  the  Universe  has  bestowed 
on  him  a  thinking  mind ;  therefore  all  that  can  be  discovered  is  legitimate. 
Science  has  this  advantage,  that  it  is  continually  on  the  advance,  and  is  ever 
ready  to  correct  its  errors  when  fresh  light  or  new  discoveries  make  such  neces- 
sary." 

If  Mr.  Darwin  is  thus  driven  away  from  the  animal  kingdom  by  Mr.  David- 
son, a  no  less  eminent  specialist  in  the  department  of  Botany  gives  a  yet  more 
emphatic  verdict  against  him  in  that  province  of  life:  I  refer  to  Dr.  Carruthers, 
keeper  of  the  botanical  department  of  the  British  Museum.  In 'an  address 
before  the  Geologists'  Association,  of  which  he  was  then  President,  at  the 
session  of  i876-'77,  he  says  : 

"No  doubt  there  is  in  the  older  Palaeozoic  rocks  a  great  absence  of  any 
records  of  land  life.  But  the  evolution  of  the  Vascular  Cryptogams  and  the 
Phanerogams  from  the  green  seaweeds  through  the  liverworts  and  mosses,  if  it 
took  place,  must  have  been  carried  on  through  a  long  succession  of  ages,  and 
by  an  innumerable  series  of  gradually  advancing  steps  ;  and  yet  we  find  not  a 
single  trace  either  of  the  early  water  forms  or  of  the  later  and  still  more  numer- 
ous dry-land  forms.  The  conditions  that  permitted  the  preservation  of  the 
fucoids  in  the  Llandovery  rocks  at  Malvern,  and  of  similar  cellular  organisms 
elsewhere,  were,  at  least,  fitted  to  preserve  some  record  of  the  necessarily  rich 
floras,  if  they  had  existed,  which,  through  immense  ages,  led  by  minute  steps  to 
the  Conifer  and  Monocotyledon  of  these  Paleozoic  rocks. 

"  The  complete  absence  of  such  forms,  and  the  sudden  and  contemporaneous 
appearance  of  highly  organized  and  widely  separated  groups,  deprive  the 
hypothesis  of  genetic  evolution  of  any  countenance  from  the  plant  record  of 
these  ancient  rocks.  The  whole  evidence  is  against  evolution,  and  there  is 
none  in  favour  of  it. 

"The  whole  evidence  supplied  by  fossil  plants  is,  then,  opposed  to  the 
hypothesis  of  genetic  evolution,  and  especially  the  sudden  and  simultaneous 
appearance  of  the  most  highly  organized  plants  at  particular  stages  in  the  past 


58  Opening  of  the  Lewis  Brooks  Aliisnan. 


history  of  the  globe,  and  the  entire  absence  among  fossil  plants  of  any  forms 
intermediate  between  existing  classes  or  families.  The  facts  of  pahvontological 
botany  are  opposed  to  evolution,  but  they  testify  to  development,  to  progression 
from  higher  to  lower  types.  The  Cellular  Algre  preceded  the  Vascular  Crypto- 
gams and  the  Gymnosperms  of  the  newer  Palaeozoic  rocks,  and  these  were 
speedily  followed  by  Monocotyledons,  and,  at  a  much  later  period,  by  Dicotyle- 
dons. But  the  earliest  representatives  of  these  various  sections  of  the  vegetable 
kingdom  were  not  generalized  forms,  but  as  highly  organized  as  recent  forms, 
and  in  many  cases  more  highly  organized ;  and  the  divisions  were  as  clearly 
bounded  in  their  essential  characters,  and  as  decidedly  separated  from  each  other 
as  they  are  at  the  present  day.  Development  is  not  the  property  of  the  evolu- 
tionist; indeed,  the  Mosaic  narrative— the  oldest  scheme  of  creation— which 
traces  all  nature  to  a  supernatural  Creator,  represents  the  operations  of  that 
Creator  as  having  been  carried  out  in  a  series  of  developments,  from  the  call- 
ing of  matter  into  existence,  through  the  various  stages  of  its  preparation  for 
life,  and  on  through  various  steps  in  the  organic  world,  until  man  himself  is 
reached.  The  real  question  is,— Does  science  give  us  any  light  as  to  how  this 
development  was  accomplished?  Is  it  possible,  from  the  record  of  organic  life 
preserved  in  the  sedimentary  deposits,  to  discover  the  method  or  agent  through 
the  action  of  which  the  new  forms  appeared  on  the  globe  ?  The  rocks  record 
the  existence  of  the  plants  and  animal  forms ;  but  as  yet  they  have  disclosed 
nothing  whatever  as  to  y^ow  these  forms  originated." 


Note  on  the  Post-Glacial  Flood,  p.  39, 


The  unceremonious  manner  in  which  the  suggestion  of  a  "  PaL^eolithic  Flood  " 
is  rejected  by  writers  on  this  subject  in  England  implies  a  want  of  proper  atten- 
tion to  the  facts  of  the  case.  American  geologists,  at  least,  take  a  very  different 
view  of  the  matter.  Thus  Dana  remarks :  "  That  the  melting  of  the  glacier 
should  have  ended  in  a  great  flood  is  evident  from  the  common  observation  that, 
in  cold  latitudes,  floods  terminate  ordinary  snowy  winters.  *  *  *  The  fact 
that  such  a  flood,  vast  beyond  conception,  was  the  final  event  in  the  history  of 
the  glacier,  is  manifest  in  the  peculiar  stratification  of  the  flood-made  deposits, 
and  in  the  spread  of  the  stratified  Drift  southward  along  the  Mississippi  Valley 
to  the  Gulf,  as  first  made  known  by  Hilgard.  Only  under  the  rapid  contribution 
of  immense  amounts  of  sand  and  gravel,  and  of  water  from  so  unlimited  a 
source,  could  such  deposit  have  accumulated."     Manual,  2nd  edit.,  p.  553. 


Note  on  the  Absence  of   Traces  of  PaltEolithic 
Man  in  the  North  of  Europe,  pp.  52-54. 


The  argument  for  the  recent  date  of  the  Glacial  Epoch  based  on  the  absence 
of  all  traces  of  the  paliijolithic  stone  implements  (and,  with  a  few  trifling  excep- 
tions, the  absence  of  the  paleolithic  animals)  in  Denmark,  Scandinavia,  and 
Scotland  was  published  in  "  The  Recent  Origin  of  Man  "  in  1875,  and  although 
there  have  been  many  notices  and  reviews  of  that  work,  no  attempt  has  ever 
been  made  to  reply  to  this  point.  I  do  not  think  it  can  be  replied  to.  If  there 
is  any  fallacy  in  the  argument  I  should  be  pleased  to  have  it  pointed  out.  I 
hive  called  attention  to  it  several  times  since  1875,  but  to  the  present  moment 
the  advocates  of  the  antiquity  of  man  continue  to  pass  it  over  in  silence.  I 
again  call  attention  to  it. 


TKE  LIBSA3KY 

IWIYERSSTY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
Los  Angeles 

This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


Form  L9 — 15m-10,'48  (B1039 )  444 


~^. 


^ 


-^  out  hall- 


733   Opening  of  the 
U2a. — Lewis  -Brooks — 


mjseum  at  the 
-Uimcersi±y  of  ViT^gin^ 


GN 

738 

S72a 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


AA    000  575  454    4 


